Birds of a Feather
by nine miles to go
Summary: MJ hasn't spoken to her childhood friends Peter or Harry for years, but old loyalties are about to be tested. She will always be the tie that binds them, whether she wants to or not. Set post-TASM2, spoilers for the second film.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to Spider-Man blah blah blah.

* * *

Birds of a Feather 

Graduation is a blur of tears and unfounded nostalgia and fear. Two months later, so is Gwen Stacy's funeral.

It is jarring to be reunited with her high school classmates so early after their departure from each other. Even in these two past months, which have been more brutal on MJ than any months she can remember, she has distanced herself so much from them: from their happy futures and their proud families and their nitpicking over class schedules and roommate assignments. In high school she always felt a little misplaced among her peers and the short separation of these past few weeks has only served to widen the chasm between herself and them.

More than anything, Gwen's death terrifies her. Gwen, who was smart and motivated, who had more of a chance of making something of herself than anyone at Midtown: dead.

The terror of it distracts, however briefly, from everything else. From the salty, hot taste of her own panic warm between her teeth, from the knot in her stomach that tightens with each passing day, from the ache of bracing her fists, her knees, her ankles against the complete and utter uncertainty of her situation.

Two days before the power outage, before the attack of the genetically altered madman they all call _Electro,_ MJ's father had been evicted from their old home in Queens. She came home from a promotional gig out of state to find the place emptied, and hasn't heard from her father since.

"What was she even doing there?" asks Liz, her throat clogged with tears.

MJ doesn't cry. She is too tired, too scared, to afford any emotions. She keeps the grief at bay by standing still, by holding her breath, by forcing herself to look up at the blaringly bright sun instead of looking at the streaming eyes of her classmates.

She is surprised to hear Flash's voice in response: "She was helping Spider-Man," he says, with the same reverence for her that he usually only reserves for the man in the mask.

They all shift uneasily in the mud, watching as Gwen's mother and her too many brothers cry in front of the closed casket.

They are not old enough, not equipped enough to deal with tragedy. For most of them it's the first funeral they've ever attended, and the shock of it is still more profound than the sadness, which she is sure will endure and then ebb at them for years to come. MJ can barely remember her own mother's funeral, can barely remember crying even then. It seems like sadness is something that grew inside of her a little bit every year, like a childhood phase she never outgrew.

People are talking about Gwen but MJ isn't listening. She's remembering their junior year, the year Gwen spent tutoring her in trigonometry – how patient she was, how committed. Most of the teachers had given up on MJ by then. She couldn't blame them. She had other things on her mind and did a poor job of disguising it.

But Gwen wouldn't give up on her. MJ never had a chance to properly thank her for that – for the faith that she had in her, however undeserved.

She feels a tear slide down her face and touches her cheek in surprise. It feels like there is something leaking out of her, and it could be her grief, it could be her terror, it could be anything, but she can't stop it.

People are shuffling around her now. The proceedings are over. MJ glances around, wishing she had thought to say hello to somebody, uncertain who she should follow and suddenly too self-conscious to walk out of here alone.

She stands there for a while, maybe longer than she should. She sees Peter Parker standing just beyond the grave, a few paces behind Gwen's family. His face is stone-like, his posture ramrod still, and yet his despair is so evident that it seems to make the air around him heavier with its burden.

He looks older to her now than he ever has. Like he has crossed into some unreachable realm of grief that she herself cannot fathom.

They had been friends once. Before high school, before braces and bra shopping and leg shaving and all the other small but steady things that separated girls from boys in their teenage years. She is struck with the memory of standing on a subway platform, Harry on one side of her, Peter on the other, on a class field trip to Central Park. She remembers the feeling of being anchored between the two of them, the comfort of her Velcro sneakers and her well-worn overalls and knowing that she had the two of them even if sometimes it felt like she had nothing to look forward to at all.

When Harry moved away she and Peter tried earnestly to stay friends, not just with each other but with Harry, too. But Harry never returned a single one of their letters, and then the summer before high school there was an almost imperceptible shift that changed everything. It was about the time her father took a turn for the worse, about the time MJ started hanging out with the other drama kids and starving herself to fit in, and Peter Parker was the last thing on her mind.

She aches for that little boy now. For his goofy smile and his biting remarks, for the way he used to make fun of the bows in her pigtails and force them to listen to his offbeat mix tapes and poke her bedroom window with a stick if he suspected she was sleeping in on a school day.

They have all been touched by tragedy now. Her mother, Peter's uncle, Harry's father. _Gwen_. They are eighteen and newly orphaned in their own fashions. She has never thought too much about it, but it makes sense that the three of them found each other as early as they did. There would always be something that connected them, a darkness, an uncertainty, some deep-seated longing for something that they could never quite place.

She turns away from him just as his chest shudders with an unsounded sob. He loved her. She has never seen anyone love more fiercely than he and Gwen did; she remembers how they all laughed and catcalled when he made out with her on the stage at graduation and the memory of it seems so distant from the present that she almost smiles, almost forgets why they are here and what they are mourning.

She can't linger here. She says her silent goodbye to Gwen, her silent thank you to one of the few true friends she had in her otherwise misguided time spent at Midtown Science.

And then she turns and leaves the graveyard without looking back.

* * *

There is a reception somewhere, but MJ doesn't attend. She doesn't think she can stand talking to the other kids. Most of them are headed to college, or have jobs lined up, or families they can lean on until they know what they're doing.

MJ doesn't have any of that, and doesn't even have an excuse. She applied to college, but her father never filed taxes and the FAFSA never went through. She scraped an acceptance into Empire State but what did it matter if she couldn't even get loans?

She thought maybe it was a sign that she should focus on auditioning in the city, that she should just skip college altogether in favor of finding her big break. Up until a few weeks ago she was fine. She was living at home despite the near constant verbal onslaught from her alcoholic father, supporting herself with waitressing and promotional gigs, auditioning every time she got the chance.

But then the eviction warnings came. She tried everything she could to rouse her father to save the house and after spending every penny she had to her name and forcing him to contact someone who could help him manage his debt, she thought she might have succeeded: but now she was both broke and entirely, devastatingly wrong.

She takes a bus back into Manhattan. It drops her off at Port Authority and she opens her wallet to find thirty dollars and some change. She thinks she might cry, but when she opens her mouth a laugh croaks out of her throat, dry and unseemly. She stands to the side of the crowd bustling through, her hair greasy and unshowered, her skin crawling, her most important worldly possessions all crammed into a duffel bag and a backpack.

She is out of options. For the last two nights she's been staying in hostels, but now it is official: she has _nowhere_ to go.

She wastes two of the precious dollars on a bagel, and then sits in the terminal eating it as slowly as she can, just so she can have some place she belongs, some place she is allowed to sit, for another few minutes. She imagines sleeping in Central Park. She wouldn't. She couldn't. But it's going to be night soon, and she is out of practical options.

There are homeless shelters, she knows that. But who would believe her if she showed up at their doorstep? In her nicely-fitted black funeral dress and flats and a curling iron in her backpack. Even if they let her stay, all her stuff would be stolen before sunup. She isn't an idiot.

There isn't a person in the world she can call, either. Her phone provider cut off service to her cell months ago anyway. She knows she has an aunt living somewhere in Pennsylvania, but she has no means to contact her. She could try Flash, but Flash's parents were never subtle about their disdain for her while the two of them were dating and besides, today of all days she couldn't possibly face him or anyone else from school.

She leaves Port Authority and wanders toward midtown, walking aimlessly, not even realizing until she's practically at the front gates that she has wandered back to their high school. She sees a few kids lingering outside, getting out of their summer classes, and feels a sudden pang of regret. Why was she so eager to leave?

She walks past the campus, her duffel heavier with every block. It's stiflingly hot, even as the sun sinks lower into the sky, threatening her with the passage of time and her complete indecision about what to do next. Her hair is sticky with sweat, plastered to the back of her neck, dripping at her hairline. She has to sit down.

"Mary Jane Watson?"

She turns at the sound of her own name, instantly shamed by the glamour of the girl talking to her. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, her skin glowing, her posture assured. One swift, unconscious glance of her is all it takes for MJ to envy everything else, from her hip-hugging pencil skirt to her smart pointed heels.

The woman's smile is condescending and reserved, but there is some warmth in it. "You're a difficult young woman to track down. I've been looking for you all week."

MJ tries to smile back. "Who are you?"

The woman is unaffected by MJ's bluntness. "Felicia," she says, extending her hand for MJ to shake. It's cold to the touch. "Personal assistant to Harry Obsorn."

"Harry?" She is so delirious with heat and exhaustion that she wonders if she has misheard this alarmingly well-dressed person. "You know Harry?"

She nods curtly, with exaggerated patience. "I work for him. Are you free right now?"

MJ almost laughs in her face. They both know if she said anything otherwise it would be a bold-faced lie. "Yeah. Is Harry around? Did he—did he want to see me?"

"Harry's out of the country at the moment," says Felicia. "I've come here on his behalf. He has a favor to ask of you."

"Of me?"

There's a sharp pinging noise and Felicia pulls out a phone so contemporary and state-of-the-art that MJ has never seen a model like it before. She holds up a finger to silence MJ, something that MJ would ordinarily not take to kindly, but she is so bewildered she can't even think to react. Felicia raises her eyebrows and finishes typing something before turning her attention back to MJ.

"Yes, of you. The car is right over there. We can discuss it in my office at OsCorp."

MJ feels uneasy and almost tells her no right then and there. She may be desperate to get off the streets right now, but it isn't worth getting into a car with a complete stranger for some ambiguous _favor_ so she can have maybe ten minutes of air-conditioning and this stiletto-wearing beauty queen judging her for looking like the homeless person she is.

But she remembers Harry. Not the Harry she's seen in pictures, gallivanting with super models and popping champagne bottles at museum openings or even the Harry she saw solemnly standing in a procession at his father's funeral. She remembers the Harry who lost his two front teeth at the same time in first grade and taught her to play poker and always shared his lunch whenever she forgot money for it at home.

She swallows her shame and looks toward the sleek black Lincoln town car. "Okay."

* * *

Felicia's office is every bit as sleek and intimidating as she is. The room is not necessarily wide, but expansive, with high arching walls and ceilings made entirely of glass. There is so little in the way of furniture – one sharp-edged glass desk, two chairs, a locked cabinet in the corner – that MJ can't help but wonder what exactly Felicia's function is at OsCorp.

She searches the room for some clues, like a nameplate that might say her full name or a document, but she doesn't see it anywhere and she's too embarrassed to ask now.

Felicia gestures to the glossy chair that faces her desk. "Sit, sit," she says to MJ.

MJ obeys, trying to be graceful about setting all of her stuff down on the floor as she does it. With her sweat and grime and disheveled luggage she is a sharp and ugly contrast to the room and its owner.

Felicia sits, and gives MJ another tight-lipped, calculating smile. There is an indistinct pause and MJ wonders if she should say something just to fill the silence, but then Felicia says, "Harry tells me you're an actress."

"Well," MJ blurts. She feels her face growing hot. She wonders how Harry would even know that. Has he been keeping tabs on her? Or did he just assume from the ballet recitals and after school choirs of yesteryear that she would eventually get pushed in that direction? "Kind of. Yes. I mean – I want to be, I haven't done anything professional."

"Right," says Felicia, and the way her eyes are fixed on MJ's she can tell that Felicia already knows this, that she might know a lot more than she has indicated so far. "So you don't have any college plans?"

MJ purses her lips, her legs chafing as she adjusts herself in this too rigid chair. "No. Why?"

"You applied out of school, though, didn't you?"

"Yes," says MJ, trying not to sound defiant. She can't help but add: "And I got in. To Empire State." She doesn't want this smug woman to think that she's completely inadequate, even though she may look it right now.

The smile on Felicia's face doesn't waver for a moment. MJ wonders what it's like to be so self-assured, to be so confident of her place in the world. "That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about."

MJ's brows knit. "College? Harry wanted to talk to me about college?"

She's almost insulted. Of all the things Harry wanted to talk to her about, it was her obvious shortcomings? Why wouldn't he talk to her himself, why wouldn't he reach out? After all the letters she sent, the emails she and Peter wrote, and not a word from him. For the better part of a decade.

She shakes her head, and before Felicia can reply, she says, "You know, I haven't seen Harry in like ten years. I'm not sure if he even –"

"No, he was quite specific with me," says Felicia, somehow managing to overpower MJ without raising her voice so much as one decibel. "He cares about you, you know. He says he deeply regrets losing touch with you, but that his father forbade him from associating with his old friends when he left."

MJ feels her eyes narrowing. "If Harry regrets it so deeply then why can't he tell me all of this himself?"

Felicia nods as if in understanding. "He's a busy man now, as you can imagine. He did tell me to give you this."

She holds up an envelope; "Mary Jane" is written on the back in sloppy cursive. But she doesn't give it to MJ quite yet.

"You might be aware of the scholarship program here at OsCorp," she says, tapping on the clear glass of her desk. To MJ's surprise some sort of interface pops up on the desk with the OsCorp web page. Felicia taps it again and the image widens, a picture of ethnically diverse college students smiling with ridiculously perfect teeth. "A scholarship from OsCorp would provide full tuition, as well as room and board."

MJ shakes her head. "That's nice." She looks away from the screen. "I didn't apply."

"Yes, but you _do_ qualify."

MJ laughs out loud at this. "How do you figure? I'm not – I hate science, no offense," she says, gesturing vaguely to the entire building, "and my grades weren't exactly _stellar_ – "

"OsCorp is expanding its scholarship program to support the arts," says Felicia evenly. "And besides, your standardized testing scores _more_ than qualify you for –"

"Wait, what? How do you have access to –"

"Empire State's records are all accessible to OsCorp through our affiliation with the school. That has been the case for years," says Felicia easily.

"You said he needed a favor," says MJ, without missing a beat.

Felicia allows herself one small chuckle. "Smart woman. You get right to the point, don't you?"

"We have that in common, I see," says MJ, whose nerves are possibly more strung out now than they were when the bus dropped her off a few hours ago.

Felicia clasps her hand together and the interface on the desk disappears. "Maybe 'favor' is the wrong word," says Felicia, plucking the envelope and running her fingers along the crease of the paper. "He's particularly concerned about a mutual friend of yours. Peter Parker, I believe?"

MJ feels the familiar knot in her stomach tighten at the sound of his name, intensified by an abstract brand of guilt. "Peter?"

Felicia nods solemnly. It is evident that she knows about the circumstances, and it occurs to MJ for the first time since she walked onto OsCorp property that it's likely that Felicia might have known Gwen herself.

"Harry tried to reach out to Peter without much success. He's worried about him. The only favor he asks is that you try to reconnect with him."

MJ considers this for a few moments. There is something vaguely offensive about being told to be a better friend by this woman she has never met, this woman who knows nothing of her history with either of the boys but sees fit to start advising her on how to handle them. But MJ can't necessarily rationalize being angry with Felicia for doing her job.

Finally she says, "That doesn't sound like Peter. He wouldn't ignore Harry. He's not like that."

"I understand you and Peter haven't been very close in the past few years. Is it possible he might have changed?"

MJ feels her cheeks heating in frustration. "No." She grabs her duffel bag. Something is wrong here – she can't say what it is, but she feels it gnawing in her gut, impossible to ignore. "Thank you, but no thank you. I don't need the scholarship. And if I get in touch with Peter it will be on my own terms."

"The scholarship isn't conditional," Felicia assures her. "The funding has already gone through. You would have received an e-mail this afternoon, had you been able to access it."

She blinks, afraid that she will spill over like a chipped cup. If it's true, it's almost too much to fathom. She hasn't felt any semblance of safety in such a long time. She can't trust it, especially when it comes voiceless and faceless from a person in a past lifetime.

Felicia rises from the desk and offers MJ the letter. "Read it," she says. If she has been at all irritated by MJ's attitude then she is doing a marvelous job of hiding it. "I'll be in touch on Harry's behalf again soon."

MJ accepts the letter warily. "Does he not want to talk to me himself?"

"Read the letter," says Felicia again, more firmly this time. "I'll show you out. Oh, and Miss Watson?"

"Yeah?" says MJ, slipping the letter into her purse.

"Be sure to get to campus housing before they close tonight. They'll have the key to your dorm room."

MJ's lungs feel concave as she exhales a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding, shaking with her mingling sense of foreboding and relief. For a moment the rest of it doesn't matter. The mysterious absence of Harry, the letter in her purse; the grief heavy on Peter's shoulders and the eviction notice nailed to her front door; none of it. She has a place to _sleep_. And right now that's all she can ask for.

She should thank Felicia. This woman might have just helped save her life. But the elevator doors slide shut and MJ is left standing alone, plummeting fifty floors back down to the bottom, wondering how long she will be haunted by the ghosts of people she used to know.

* * *

... I'm back (help).


	2. Chapter 2

Birds of a Feather

It's almost nightfall when MJ unlocks the door to her dorm room and pushes it open. The sight of the two empty beds, the two standard-issue desks and dressers and chairs, all dented and scabbed with years of student use, makes her throat tight, her eyes sting – it is all she never let herself hope for, something this basic, this ordinary, this beautiful.

And now that it's hers she finds it hard to question the circumstances, even when they seem dubious and unclear. She knows she doesn't deserve the scholarship. Maybe she might have, if she had ever applied for it in the first place, but she didn't. Her connection to Harry is the only reason she's here right now.

And what's so terrible about that? She sets her duffel and her backpack down on the ground and stares out the lone window, which faces out to the busy street. She has never accepted charity. She has always been stubborn and proud and _stupid_ about it, and look where it's gotten her so far: stuck with a deadbeat father, screwed by the system, wandering the streets with no friends and no home and no options.

The money for the scholarship is a drop in the well for Harry, and she knows that she would have done the same for him in a heartbeat, if she had the means. But still, she feels uneasy. Apprehensive. She hates the feeling of owing anybody anything, and this right here – should she decide to take it – is the kind of gesture she can never pay back.

She only means to sit on the bare mattress but as soon as she does she feels the exhaustion in her bones, the weeks of worry and helplessness and fear, and without making a conscious decision to she slides across the plastic surface and rests her cheek under her hands.

She jolts awake to the sound of a siren piercing the night. It's completely black in the room. She stumbles toward the door, squeezing her eyes shut – she has always been afraid of the darkness, and as long as she closes her eyes, she figures, however irrationally, she is in the kind of darkness she can control. Her fingers find the light switch and she opens her eyes as the room comes back to life and her limbs are weak with the relief of this place that half belongs to her, this place where she can sleep without wrapping her backpack straps around the front of herself and clutching her bag so nobody tries to take her stuff.

The letter. She pulls it out of her purse and is not surprised that the envelope is open. It's never even been sealed. MJ sours, knowing that this is probably one more thing in a long list that Felicia is privy to without MJ's consent.

The scrawl on the inside is shaky and uneven. MJ doesn't remember that about Harry, but she supposes handwriting isn't something she would notice in elementary school. She squints at it and reads slowly, trying to decipher it.

_Dear Mary Jane, _

_I hope this letter finds you well. _

_I know you're probably wondering why you're hearing from me after all this time. If you're upset with me, you have every right to be – you and Peter both. But know that even though I was out of touch, I have thought often about our friendships, and I hope that you can forgive me for the years I took them for granted._

_By now you've spoken with my assistant Felicia. I've told her to tell you that I'm out of the country for the sake of security measures, but she knows the truth, a truth that I will now share with you because even after all this time I trust you more than I would trust my own flesh and blood: I'm not well, MJ. The debilitating disease that took my father's life is genetic, and it isn't pretty. _

_I'm telling you this so you understand the difficulty of meeting with you in person, or with Peter for that matter. I don't want either of you to worry. I'm working to find a cure. But in the meantime I am not fit to be seen, in public or otherwise. At times the effects of the disease can be quite shocking, and I fear that I don't act quite like myself. _

_I've tried to reach out to Peter, but I'm afraid that a regrettable misunderstanding between us has made it difficult. I'm hoping that you can succeed where I have not, for the sake of our old friendships. I think he needs us now more than ever. _

_But MJ – just trust me on this, the way that I trust you – it's probably for the best if you don't let him know we've been in touch. At least for now. I need to make things right with him, and I wouldn't want any tension between the two of us to get in the way of you reconnecting with him yourself. _

_I would tell you more, but I wouldn't want to betray Peter's trust. Just know that I am sorry for my absence, and that I hope to make things right again between the three of us. You were the truest friends I ever had, and as I race the clock against my unfortunate inheritance, your friendships are more precious to me than ever. _

_Sincerely yours, _

_Harry Osborn _

_PS – You deserve this scholarship. The drama department at Empire State agrees. I believe in you, MJ – I hope you can believe in yourself, too. _

MJ reads the letter and then rereads it, and rereads it again.

Harry's dying. He hasn't explicitly said so, but she can read between the lines. She sets the piece of paper down, her heart heavy, her eyes trailing his words in disbelief.

She wants to call him. She wants to write him back. She wants to let him know that she doesn't care how he looks or what the disease is doing to him, that she just wants to _see_ him, to be the friend to him that he is being to her. But he wouldn't have gone to such lengths to distance himself from her if that were at all possible, and the thought makes her more miserable still.

She folds the letter back together and slides it into the envelope, tucking it into the top drawer of the little desk by her bed.

He's right. She should reach out to Peter. It feels selfish, in the wake of what Harry is enduring, to have even considered not fulfilling this small request.

This is her reality now. She will fix everything, the way she never could before: she will turn it all around, starting with college, starting with Peter and Harry and all the time between the three of them that they have lost. She curls back onto the bare mattress, closing her eyes, an unfamiliar feeling swelling unbridled and dangerous in her chest: hope.

* * *

The next morning MJ wakes up determined to get her life back in order. She plugs her phone into the charger and vows to call the service company to get it restarted as soon as she gets a paycheck. She calls her sleazy boss from the bar where she used to waitress and without asking any questions he offers her as many shifts as she can handle. She navigates the unfamiliar bathrooms and basks in the glory of her first shower in several long, sweaty days, and even manages to get a load of laundry into the facilities in the basement.

The dorms are pretty quiet. There are only a few other students here in the summer, and most of them are international, interning in the city or studying abroad. None of their rooms are close to MJ's, but she doesn't mind the solitude. She never has.

Once she has unpacked her sparse belongings she heads, somewhat unwillingly, back to Queens.

She doesn't know what she's expecting to find. The eviction notice is still hanging crooked on the door, a public mark of their failure, their shame. She hesitates at the front walk, half afraid that she'll find her father lurking somewhere, half afraid that she won't. He's never disappeared for this long before and she knows he can't handle himself alone.

After a few moments she walks up and peers into the window. Empty.

She doesn't want to worry about him, but her worry for him is an integral part of her, like an open wound she can't ignore. His options are just as sparse as hers. She wants to poke her head inside, just for a moment, to see if there is any indication where he might have gone – maybe he left a note, or a number for her to call – but she tests the door and sees that it's locked, and when she tries her key it doesn't work anymore.

It doesn't matter. There are all kinds of untouched junk in the backyard. She may be short, but she could easily prop herself up on one of them and reach the kitchen window. It isn't a very far distance from the ground. She's snuck out of the house through it enough times to know.

"Mary Jane."

She flinches, taking her hand off the doorknob. How strange to be caught considering breaking into the place that used to be her home.

"May," says MJ, her hand still hovering uncertainly, her knees rigid with embarrassment. "Have you – have you heard from my dad?"

Peter's aunt takes a step forward on the porch, closer to MJ, so that MJ can see the exhaustion creased into her eyelids, the sorrow in the gentle curve of her smile. "I'm so sorry, Mary Jane, I haven't."

"Oh."

She shrugs, staring down at her cheap flip-flops. May has always had the kind of eyes that notice everything, the kind of keen sense for knowing when something is amiss. It's hard for MJ to look at her knowing that any excuse she makes for asking will be flimsy and inadequate. There is no way that May missed the eviction notice tacked onto the door.

MJ is surprised by the warmth of May's hand on her shoulder. "Dear, I hope you don't mind. I had a spare key to your house from the old days … it looked like they were about to clear everything out. So after your father left I went in and grabbed some of your things for you."

MJ's eyes widen, her gratitude and her shock far surpassing any shred of pride she might have left. "You did?"

May nods solemnly. "I had a feeling you'd be back. Here, come inside." She grabs MJ's hand like they're old friends, and MJ supposes that they are. It's just she can't remember the last time anybody ever grabbed her hand to hold, and the way May does it is so effortless, so thoughtless, that MJ is embarrassed by how much it means to her. "Have some tea with me while you're here?"

"Are you sure, I could just – "

"Of course I'm sure, dear. You know you're welcome here any time."

The way she says it, gentle but firm, is all the indication MJ needs that May is all too aware of her current predicament.

She lets MJ into the apartment and it feels like walking into a time capsule. There is so much MJ remembers about this place, buried so deep that walking in here feels more like déjà vu than an actual memory: the sunny kitchen, the quotes in picture frames on the walls, the bit of paint peeling off the staircase. The furniture is all in the same place it was when she last saw it, and Peter's shoes are still haphazardly sitting untied in the front hallway despite May's chiding, even after all these years.

May leads her to the laundry room. MJ's clothes are all folded and organized into baskets, all her knick-knacks and dance trophies and her absurdly large CD collection of terrible nineties pop music carefully tucked into a box.

"May," she says, holding a hand to her chest.

"It wasn't any trouble," says May with a dismissive wave.

"It was," MJ says, willing herself not to get emotional in front of the older woman, who has surely had more than her share of comforting people in the last few days. She takes a deep and quiet breath to settle herself and says, "I don't know how to thank you."

"Really, I had nothing else going on. Caffeine or decaf?" she asks, bustling into the kitchen. The kettle is already starting to whine. She must have been planning to have tea before MJ popped up on the porch.

"Decaf, please," says MJ, because she is too jittery to risk it.

She hears something upstairs slam – a door or a drawer, wood on wood, and the crack of it echoes through the house. MJ doesn't mean to startle but her ears are hyper-sensitive to the noise, and even though she knows she is safe here her first instinct is to glance toward the front door.

"Oh, Peter," says May apologetically.

MJ knits her fingers together, not sure what she should say. "I'm so sorry," she ends up blurting ungracefully.

May pours the contents of the kettle into two familiar old mugs. MJ watches the steam rise up and glances without mean to toward the upstairs bedroom. When she turns around, May has followed her gaze, watching on quietly.

"It's been difficult for him," says May, averting her attention back to the tea. "I saw you at the funeral. Did you know Gwen well?"

MJ shakes her head. "Well, yes," she amends, following May to the table, happy to have the tea because even though it's still scalding it gives her a place to put her hands. "She was my tutor. Junior year. Before she and Peter started dating."

Something else slams upstairs, louder this time. May closes her eyes to steel herself. Peter isn't even visible and yet his grief somehow seems to swallow up the entire house, fill every corner and space.

"That poor boy," says May, and MJ nods into her tea, wondering how on earth she thought she could do anything to help him in the first place. She feels foolish, narcissistic, even, to have assumed that she could comfort him in some way. They barely even know each other anymore, and this is a kind of sadness she cannot fathom, cannot even begin to soothe.

"Tell me, Mary Jane. How have you been? Where are you living now?"

"The dorms," says MJ, relieved that she doesn't have to lie. She hasn't decided whether or not she's going to stay, but right now she is happy to name a place, to quell May's worry. "At Empire State."

May raises her eyebrows in happy surprise. "I didn't realize you were going to Empire State."

"Yeah," says MJ, holding to the cup so she doesn't fidget and give herself away. "That's the plan."

"So is Peter," says May brightly. "How nice that the two of you will be going to the same school again."

"Yeah," MJ agrees, even though they barely ever spoke to each other when their lockers were one row away from each other at Midtown Science.

They hear footsteps barreling down the stairs. MJ freezes in her seat; the way she is sitting she is the one facing the mouth of the stairs, and before she can think to look down or away or anywhere safer she is staring straight at him.

His eyes are red and wild, staring at her with frightening intensity without really seeing her at all. He pauses on the steps and his look is almost accusatory. He wasn't expecting her, and he doesn't want her here.

"Hey," MJ says weakly.

Peter looks at his aunt as if she is in charge of summoning words for him. May, ever the peacekeeper, says, "I invited Mary Jane in for tea."

Peter nods just once, and then walks past them purposefully, into the living room. Wordlessly he snaps open a drawer with too much force, almost pulling it straight out of the wall; even from the kitchen MJ can see the tight, unyielding line of his lip, the tension in his shoulders, the knotted, angry shaking of his hands.

"Do you need something, Peter?" May asks.

Peter's voice is gruff and almost obstinate. "I've got it."

He walks out unrepentantly ignoring them both, carrying a roll of duct tape. They listen as he mounts the stairs again and shuts the door to his bedroom behind him.

"I'd better go," says MJ. She hasn't even touched her tea but suddenly she is desperate to get out of here, her skin itching at the seams of her clothes. She shouldn't have come inside in the first place.

"So soon? Mary Jane – "

"Thank you so much for the tea. And for saving my things. Really, May – "

"Are you sure you have to leave?"

MJ hoists her bag back onto her shoulder and says, "I've got a shift at the diner, it's all the way down in midtown, I'd better head out."

"Well I've got your stuff here, whenever you have time. Peter's going to get the car running and then he can drive it out to you."

"Oh, no, no, uh – I'll come back," says MJ, mortified. The last thing she wants to do is burden him.

May leans forward and hugs MJ. She holds her there for a beat, squeezing her too tightly, but there is something so reassuring about it that for a split second MJ believes her: that if she ever needed to, if she truly had no place else to go, that May would take her in, would keep her safe.

By the time MJ pulls away from her she knows where she's headed next.

"Don't be a stranger," says May.

MJ smiles and wishes she were a little less of a coward. "I won't."

* * *

She arrives back at OsCorp all full of purpose and intention and deflates almost as soon as she hits the lobby. There is security everywhere, and people are flashing badges and walking through scanners – what, did she think she was just going to casually scroll up to the top floor of the largest building in Manhattan and knock on Felicia's office door? Already people are eyeing her curiously, in her frayed denim shorts her cotton t-shirt with sweat stains in the pits and collecting down her back. She doesn't need their eyes on her to know she is out of place.

"Can I help you?"

It's a uniformed woman at one of the front desks. MJ hesitates.

"Are you here for an internship interview?" she asks, and even though her tone is professional and polite MJ can detect the smallest trace of skepticism.

MJ shakes her head. "No, I'm actually looking for someone – "

"Miss Watson."

MJ wheels around to see Felicia emerging from one of the elevators. She looks entirely unsurprised to see MJ, and almost as if she came down here with every intention of meeting her; MJ knows that OsCorp has top of the line technology, but would it even be possible for Felicia to detect her entry?

"Felicia," says MJ, still a little too stunned to collect herself.

"Walk with me," says Felicia coolly, without even breaking her stride.

MJ stares after her for a second, surprised by the nonchalance of her words, and then has to scamper like Felicia's little sister to keep up with her as she makes her way out of the massive glass doors and out into the street.

When MJ catches up she says, "Where are you going?"

"Coffee. Are you enjoying the dorm?"

"Yes, but I – "

"I went to Empire State too, you know," says Felicia, as MJ struggles to keep next to her even though Felicia is wearing heels several inches high. "It's a great education."

"Of course it is, but I can't just – "

"I was hired into OsCorp straight after graduation. A degree like that can really open doors."

"_Felicia_," MJ says, loudly enough to stop the other girl in her tracks. "I can't – thank you, thank you for everything, for talking to me about all of this, but I can't take it. I can't accept the scholarship."

Felicia's response is simple and abrupt: "Why?"

MJ isn't expecting to have to answer that. "Because," she says, gesturing vaguely. "I didn't – I don't deserve it. I didn't earn it. It doesn't feel right."

At this Felicia slides her sunglasses off of her face and rests them on the crown of her head, staring at MJ with her dark, cunning eyes. "Miss Watson," she says. "Mary Jane. I'm going to tell you this once. And I'm not telling you this as an employee of OsCorp, or even as a favor to Harry."

"Alright," says MJ uneasily, now that they have stopped dead in the middle of a crowded sidewalk.

"I am telling you as a woman in this city – in this world – that if you have any kind of opportunity to better yourself, you take it. I don't know exactly what's stopping you - maybe you feel guilty, or unworthy. I don't care." She leans in close enough that MJ can see the sleek line of her eyeliner, the perfect tiny seam of the collar of her blazer. "Listen to me or learn the hard way: you do what you have to do to survive."

MJ lets the words settle between them, momentarily stunned by the fierceness in their delivery. Felicia does not move one muscle, her brows still raised as if she is challenging MJ.

A few seconds later MJ says carefully, "No questions asked?"

"Ask me anything you want," says Felicia. She reaches up and slides her sunglasses back onto the bridge of her nose. "My answer will stay the same."

* * *

FRIENDS! It is so nice to hear from you again, it feels like a summer camp reunion only sixteen hundred times nerdier. I'm so glad you guys enjoyed the first chapter, rest assured that I'm super committed and doing lots of research. And by research I mean I ate Spider-Man themed Cheez-Its and chased one of the Spider-Man UPS trucks down a city street today. Huzzah!


	3. Chapter 3

Birds of a Feather

That night is her first night back at the bar, and she makes a hundred dollars working a double. She sticks it in an envelope and starts making a mental list of the things she needs to take care of: sheets for her bed, light bulbs for the room, bread and sandwich meat, anything that is cheap enough to tide her over until the evening when it's pretty easy to score free food from the cook.

Before they parted ways Felicia tucked a business card into MJ's palm. MJ only remembers because her fingers graze it when she puts the envelope of cash into the bottom of her purse and heads home for the night. She notices cop cars on her walk home, more than she is accustomed to seeing this late at night, but she read a headline somewhere saying that Spider-Man hadn't been spotted since the Electro attack so it makes sense that they police would try to be as visible as possible to deter any crime sprees.

It's only then that something mortifying occurs to MJ: among the things May must have grabbed from her old house are several items of Spider-Man memorabilia. It's only a t-shirt and some cheap plastic cup that she got for free at a street fair, but it's _there_, and the thought of it almost paralyzes her with its implication.

She hopes to God Peter hasn't seen them. Nobody truly knows the full account of what happened with the incident at OscorPower, where they found Gwen's body, but she knows Spider-Man was the one who made the call to the NYPD reporting her death. Whatever happened, whether Gwen had been there helping Spider-Man or not, of one thing MJ is sure: nobody must hate Spider-Man for what happened to her more than Peter Parker.

Unconsciously she picks up the pace, as if she can walk off the shame bubbling inside of her. May would know better than to let Peter see those, though. If she kept them at all.

It takes an hour for her to reach the dorms. It's past one in the morning by then, and for once MJ is discomfited by the silence, by the eerie buzz of the hallway lights. She is grateful that there isn't any functional air conditioning in the building, as if the stifling warmth of the place makes it feel a little less empty than it actually is.

She curls up on the plastic mattress, already half-asleep almost as soon as she lays her head down. As she sinks further to sleep she thinks unwittingly of the sadness of Peter's face, how it seemed as permanent and branding as a scar, and how he seemed so far apart from the boy she once knew that she wonders if she can even lay claim to having known him at all.

(((())))

* * *

_Sunlight is streaming in through the window, warming her cheeks. She is giggling. The sound is high and twinkling and unfamiliar. "We're going to get caught!" she squeals. _

_"Oh, come on, MJ, who cares?" _

_MJ raises her eyebrows. _

_"Oh, don't give me The Look," says Harry. _

_Her jaw drops open in indignation. "What look?" _

_Harry puffs out his cheeks and exaggeratedly sets his hands on his hips, splaying himself forward in imitation of her. _

_She swats at his arm. "You're horrible." _

_"Yes, I am, I'm the worst, now can we please go before you turn into Peter Parker 2.0?" Harry wraps his fingers around her wrists and tugs her along the hallway with boyish enthusiasm. "My dad will be back any minute!" _

_The Osborn mansion. The hallways are endless, the skylights on impossibly high ceilings flooding in light. She should pull her hand away but she kind of likes the excitement, the thrill of letting him lead her. He suddenly yanks her to the side, and they both stand pressing their bodies against the wall, narrowly avoiding one of the maids as she walks through with a vacuum. _

_They're both holding their breath and when she looks over at Harry she sees a mischievous, gleeful grin on his face and can't help but grin back. _

_"C'mon," he says, pulling her again. _

_"Where are we even going?" _

_"You'll see. You promise you won't get scared?" _

_There's a challenge in his voice. "Course not," she says, defiant._

_"Then hurry up." _

_He is always so demanding, so eager and brash. Usually she doesn't mind. She's loudmouthed herself. And besides, Peter – the quiet one, thoughtful and occasionally way too sarcastic for his own good – he balances them out. She wonders where he is. She knots her brow, because she knows where he is, doesn't she? Why is she suddenly struggling to remember? _

_"Here," says Harry, stopping in his tracks so fast that she runs into him. He doesn't seem to notice, his gaze fixated on a very nondescript door with a blank black pad next to it. "The door's locked. Watch." _

_He has to stand on his tiptoes to reach it, but he presses his hand to the pad. After a moment it glows and MJ hears the click of the door sliding open. _

_The room is cavernous and almost completely dark, with a faint glow emerging from the back. In the few seconds it takes for her eyes to adjust to the light MJ can see it's a tank, or some kind of large glass tube. The inside of it almost seems to shimmer, with silvery white strands that interweave and gleam mysteriously. _

_"What is it?" she asks, taking a step inside. _

_She can't see Harry from behind her, but she can hear the awe in his voice: "Spiders."_

(((())))

* * *

MJ wakes up with one ungraceful, muffled gasp, her eyes shooting open. The room is bright and traffic outside is already bustling. She rubs the sleep off her cheeks and sits upright in bed, and then remains as still as she can, trying to process the dream bit by bit.

She can't even remember the last time she thought of the Osborn mansion, and yet the dream was so realistic. She remembered everything in such perfect clarity that it almost felt _real_ – as if she were really ten years old again, tumbling through the halls with Harry, back when his hair was a floppy mess and he wore Captain America t-shirts to school and was obsessed with one-upping MJ with ridiculous dares.

The dream isn't real. She knows it never happened. But it still makes some distant part of her ache – she misses Harry. The way he was back then. The two of them always had a certain kinship, a certain wildness that came from being motherless children. He made her feel invincible.

Right up until the moment they inevitably got busted.

She shudders a little bit. Spiders. Why was she dreaming about a room filled with spiders? What kind of weird subconscious mumbo jumbo caused _that?_

She doesn't linger on it for long. There is too much to get done today. She yanks on a pair of shorts and finds yesterday's t-shirt on the floor and heads out the door to restart her cell service.

The first thing she does is try to call her father, but then she remembers he hasn't paid the bill on his own phone in months. She hangs up before it even starts to ring, and that's when her phone blares to life. It's a number she doesn't recognize.

"Hello?" she says warily.

"Mary Jane? I wasn't sure if this was still your number, it's been a few years – "

"May, hi," says MJ, recognizing the voice right away.

"Oh, excellent. Where are you living now? Peter will drive your things over to you."

"What?—no, no, May, I don't – "

"He really needs to get out of the house."

She is so thrown off by the call in the first place that she finds herself stammering, jumping out of people's way on the sidewalk because she has lost track of where she's going. "Please, it's fine, I can – I'll come over myself, I'll borrow Flash's bike and – "

"Don't be silly, dear, really. It's no trouble. It gives Peter something to do."

"I don't want Peter to have to – "

"It's the old dorms, right? The ones across the street from the registrar. Peter's going to be living there too, you know – "

"Here?" MJ asks thoughtlessly. "He is?"

"Aha! So it is the old dorms. He'll be there within the hour."

"_May_ – "

"Bye for now, dear!"

(((())))

* * *

MJ paces the floor of her dorm for nearly an hour, the phone sitting on top of her still naked mattress, anxiously anticipating Peter's call. Of course she immediately called May back after she hung up, but the woman never answered. And MJ knows better than to march straight down to Queens when Peter is inevitably already headed in her direction, bogged down with more than a decade's worth of her crap.

What will she even _say _to him? Even if his girlfriend hadn't just been killed – even if everything were peachy and normal and fine – they have nothing in common anymore. And it's not that she isn't sensitive to what he is going through. God, she feels for him, she really does. There was a time when Peter would so much as wince that she would feel his pain as viscerally and wholeheartedly as if it were hers to share. But she knows herself too well and she's going to open her mouth and say something colossally stupid.

_I'm sorry_ doesn't seem to cut it. It's wishy-washy and shallow. Or at least she's afraid that's how it will sound.

Maybe he just doesn't want to talk about it at all. Maybe she shouldn't even bring it up. But she doesn't want him to think she doesn't care when in fact she is going to be walking on eggshells making sure she doesn't say the wrong thing.

It's so hot in the dorm that after an hour of pacing she's sweating profusely. She darts into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face and can't help but notice her reflection in the mirror – her hair wild, the cowlicks along her hairline curled and slick with sweat, her makeup-less face pale and her cheeks bright pink from the heat.

Her phone. Shit. She runs back into her room and sure enough there's a missed call. She grabs it so fast that it slips through her wet fingers – she braces herself as it hits the floor, thanking whatever higher power is in charge of her when it doesn't smash, and then picks it back up again and hits redial.

"Hey."

It's Peter's voice. It almost makes her laugh, the bizarreness in his familiarity, how he doesn't even bother saying who it is as if they still call each other all the time, as if he's still a contact in her phone.

"Hey, Peter," she says. That wasn't so hard. She could almost pass for a functional human being.

"You're – what floor are you on? I think you have to buzz me in or something."

"Fourth floor, I'll be right down."

"Okay."

She hangs up the phone and stares at it for a few beats. She doesn't know why she's suddenly self-conscious about talking to him. She has to actively stop herself from fidgeting, from pushing her hair behind her ears and sucking in her stomach and running her tongue along her teeth.

This is ridiculous. It's Peter Parker. She watched him pick his nose in kindergarten.

She half runs down the stairs to make up for the time she wasted. Through the window on the door she can see him, slouching against his illegally parked, beat up old car, the one his uncle used to drive when they were kids. His eyes are fixated on the cement so she can't see his face.

When she opens the door he doesn't look up. Her first impulse is to yell his name and she catches herself just in time. He walks up to him cautiously and even when she's so close she can reach out and touch him he doesn't move, doesn't seem to notice anything at all – he is as still as a statue, hardened, unmovable.

She isn't used to being out of her element anymore. Between the drunk customers and the wild auditions and hollering at her father she wonders if she knows how to be gentle, how to be soft.

"Pete," she says, reviving the old nickname without meaning to.

He looks up, but not right away. He is too sluggish to be startled, as if he knew she was there but needed the time to fully process it. "Hey," he says, averting his eyes just as soon as he looks at her. He pushes himself off of the car and walks around to the trunk. "This is all of it, right?"

To be honest she has no idea, and at this particular moment it's the last thing on her mind. "Yeah," she says anyway, awkwardly following him.

"I think we can get it all in one trip, then."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

He loads her up with the lighter bags. She almost protests and says she can carry more, but he picks up the heavier things with ease and she is reluctant to make any kind of a fuss.

As she scans her card to get into the building the quiet is too much for her to stand. "I'm so sorry about this. I mean, I appreciate it. I told May I could get it, I didn't mean to drag you all the way out here."

"No, no, it's fine."

He says the words to his shoes more than to her. Her cheeks are burning. She probably shouldn't have said anything at all. The walk up the stairs is excruciatingly silent – two or three times she opens her mouth and almost says something anyway, but he's moving fast and she is barely keeping up. By the time they reach the fourth floor too much time has passed for her to say anything of substance.

"It's 410," she says instead. "A few rooms down."

Peter doesn't answer, just dutifully follows the numbers until they reach her door. She unlocks it for him, wishing she'd thought to tidy the place up, or at least make it look more livable: her sweaty clothes from yesterday are strewn haphazardly along the floor, and everything else is incongruously bare, from the desk to the mattress to the tiny closet.

He doesn't seem to notice. "Over here's fine," says MJ, tossing her stuff down on the ground.

Peter follows suit, putting her boxes down with a lot more care and then shoving his hands into his pockets almost before he's even upright again.

"Thanks," she says.

"No problem."

When he says this he glances up almost accidentally, and even in that brief moment she sees the raw grief in his eyes, red-rimmed and watery. His pain is so visceral that she can't help but react, taking an involuntary step toward him, her hands flinching as if she might reach out to him. Thankfully his gaze hits the floor before he sees her quiver of hesitation, her complete inadequacy to help him.

He gestures toward the hall. "I guess I'll, uh …"

"Yeah, yeah, thanks again," she says, moving out of his way.

As he shuffles toward the open door his knee bumps into one of the boxes and knocks a few of her things to the floor. "Sorry," he mumbles, leaning forward to pick them up before she has even fully registered what happened.

"Oh, it's fine, I got it – "

"No way." He's half-crouched still, holding a loose CD in his hands.

She squints at it. It's old, old enough that she doesn't remember right away what it is. _Peter's Playlist_, it says in black sharpie. And then in thick, childish strokes of purple, a giant "X" crossed out over his title and replaced with hers: _Peter's Whiny Emo Music. _

"Oh," she says, not sure whether she should be embarrassed or not. They were eleven when he made her that mix.

As he sets it back on top of the box he actually looks at her, fully, deliberately. "I can't believe you kept this."

She shrugs, relieved for an opening, for some semblance of normal conversation. "What else was I going to listen passive-aggressively blast on my stereo while I painted my nails as black as my soul?"

A breath escapes him, something reminiscent of a laugh. For a moment she thinks she might see his upper lip curl but then his face is abruptly slack, and she winces, seeing him remember all over again, seeing him feel it the same fresh, horrible way he must feel it every hour, every minute of every day.

"I'll see you," he says, standing up and heading for the door.

"Yeah," she says, too brightly.

He pauses on the way out, staring at her doorframe. No, at the number next to it. He blinks, just once.

"Huh," he says, shifting his weight between his feet, already starting to walk away.

"What?" she can't help but ask, following him out.

He glances over his shoulder and says, so carelessly she thinks she might have misheard him: "I'm in room 408."

(((())))

* * *

Forgive me for being so slow this time around ... I have made a promise to myself that for every page I write of fanfiction, I write my a page of my original non-fanfic story (GASP), for the sake of maybe someday having a shred of a chance at makin' human money at this. As a result I've started hanging out in coffee shops to write like a sulky unshowered hipster, except minus the hipster part since my wardrobe these days mostly consists of I Think These Are My Shorts and I'm Pretty Sure I Didn't Sweat All The Way Through This Top Yesterday, Why Not.

Stay in school, guys ... behold the post-graduation glamour that awaits.

(Also for you musical fans out there I'm 24601% the sad sack behind the Sensitive Enjolras twitter handle because guess what mom it turns out the kind of writing I'm good at is EXCLUSIVELY THE KIND THAT DOESN'T PAY)


	4. Chapter 4

Birds of a Feather

MJ actually doesn't mind the customers that come into the bar on weekday nights. With a few exceptions, they're all pretty tame. Often it's couples on first dates or in the early stages of their courtship, still trying to impress each other with how late they can stay up, or so engrossed in getting to know each other that they don't notice the time going by at all. And then they usually leave larger tips, either because they're happy and tipsy or because they don't want their date to think they're stingy.

There are the usual loners who come into the bar, too. Night owls. At least one angst-ridden poet. Every now and then a grad student from the university who has a rather unconventional choice of place to study. But for the most part they keep to themselves, and rarely get so drunk that MJ has to call them a taxi or, as she does on some unfortunate nights, the police.

It's Fridays and Saturdays that make MJ want to rip her hair out. _Young_ people.

Okay, okay. It's not like MJ doesn't know how to party. For an eighteen-year-old she has had her fair share of beverages she is not technically allowed to consume. But first of all, she has a _real_ fake, not the sloppy, barely passable IDs that half the kids are trying to shove under her nose. And more importantly, she doesn't get drunk. Yes, she gets happy. Maybe even tipsy on occasion. But never vomit-inducing, where-did-I-leave-my-shoes, what-the-hell-happened-last-night _drunk_.

"Kill me," Louise, one of her co-workers, mutters as she passes.

MJ blows a strand of hair out of her face, but it sticks to her sweaty forehead. Vodka cranberry, Blue Moon, two Long Island Iced Teas on the left side of the bar, three tequila shots and a Bud on the right – and, of course, another waitress coming with a drink order in her hand.

"Kinda busy here," says MJ, jimmying the broken tap.

"Someone puked in the bathroom."

"Uck," MJ exclaims, leaning down to grab the cranberry juice out of the minifridge. "Need-to-know basis, Lou."

"It's _blue_ – "

"LOU."

"I am not sorry, I'm the opposite of sorry, except maybe for myself," Louise grumbles, barely audible over the music, a very large bachelor party, and what appears to be half the Empire State cross country team.

Sometime around two-thirty in the morning when they finally close up shop and kick the last drunk idiot out, MJ and Louise are in the alley next to the dumpster, Louise to take a smoke and MJ to count her tips.

"You were a cheerleader, right?" asks Louise. In the unflattering yellow light the wrinkles around her lips and the bags under her eyes are more pronounced than ever.

MJ shuffles the bills in the envelope, trying to organize them, smallest value to largest. "First two years of high school, yeah."

"But you can do like, flips and shit?"

MJ glances at Louise, just in time to get a puff of smoke to the face. "I haven't in years. But yeah, probably."

Louise raises an eyebrow.

"Not _here_."

Louise smirks, and then rifles through her shoulder bag with her free hand, pulling out a piece of paper. "A friend of mine is opening a club. Kind of unconventional, kind of burlesquey, I don't know, I just heard her yammering about it. But they're looking for dancers."

MJ takes the piece of paper from her, but doesn't bother to look at it yet. She's heard about plenty of dancing gigs before and a lot of them have been less than legit. "What does it pay?" she asks, prepared to dismiss it if it's too little, prepared to assume the worst if it pays too much.

"Six hundred, for three nights a week. Plus tips." She shrugs. "No harm in trying out."

"Hmm," says MJ. She folds the piece of paper into her tip envelope. It's too late at night for her to be mulling this over. She's so tired that she could fall asleep standing up.

Still, even as she showers off her sweat and breathes in the steam, she is thinking of it. She is staring down at her pale bare legs and remembering leaps and kicks and the rush of everyone's eyes on her, the beautiful terror that fluttered in her stomach when she was thrown through the air. But more importantly, she is thinking of a fat paycheck, and the opportunity to pay her own way through school without the scholarship money that is still making her ill at ease.

She dries herself off in a hurry, rubbing her skin raw, as if she can shed her own discomfort. The hallway is empty when she emerges in her towel. She unlocks the door to her room and glances over at the room next to hers, the room where Peter will supposedly live in a few weeks.

How strange. She has been his next-door neighbor almost as early as her memories go back, so really it will be nothing new. But there is something much more intimate about this, something subtle and edged and uncertain. She grazes the wall with her fingers and imagines him on the other side of it, and for the first time in a while, she smiles.

She misses him. She misses herself – the way she was, back when they were friends, back when they could rely on each other for anything, back when they couldn't imagine a future without the other one in it.

Maybe they can have it back again. Maybe those little people are salvageable. Of all the pieces of herself that MJ has lost over the years, maybe there is one thing left that isn't gone for good.

(((())))

_"I can't go." _

_MJ rifles through the dollar bills in the front pocket of her backpack and pulls out three for the hot dog vendor. "Go where?" _

_"To Harry's today," says Peter glumly. _

_MJ takes her hot dog from the vendor and starts hunting for mustard packets, standing on her tiptoes to see over the counter. "Why not?" _

_Peter pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "Uncle Ben wants to teach me how to fix up the car." _

_MJ looks at him, deliberately pouting as they start their half-mile walk home. It's about as far as the leash Peter's aunt and uncle have on him extends – MJ's father doesn't particularly care where she goes, as long as she's home before seven and doesn't get in any trouble. _

_"But it's summer," she says. _

_Peter shrugs. _

_"And Harry says he has something really cool to show us." _

_"Yeah, yeah. Last time he said that it was the maid's dirty magazines – "_

_"No, he said it was scary!"_

_Peter shrugs again, and grabs her hot dog out of her hands, biting the other end and then handing it back to her. "Uck. Mustard." _

_"Sorry, princess," she says, wiping some off the side of her mouth. _

_"Maybe next Tuesday we can – "_

(((())))

MJ's ringtone pierces through the quiet of the dorm room and she wakes up violently and all at once, ripped out of the dream so quickly that she can't blink it out of her eyelids. Even as the dorm comes into bleary focus she is still convinced that thirteen-year-old Peter is walking beside her, the sun glinting on his old glasses, the untied laces of his sneakers dragging behind him.

It almost felt like she was living it. Like she had put herself in a time machine and gone back to –

Gone back to what? That never happened. She went to that hot dog place with Peter plenty of times but she can't ever remember talking about anything that specific, can't remember him talking about fixing up the car or wearing those doofy large headphones around his neck.

The phone is still ringing. MJ scrambles to pick it up, almost knocking it over in the process.

"Hello?" she croaks, her voice still hoarse from sleep.

"Mary Jane Watson?"

She clears her throat and tries to squint somewhere to check the time, but the only clock she has is on her phone. "Yeah."

"This is the Financial Aid office. I'm calling to let you know that the FAFSA you submitted was cleared, and you've been approved for full student loans."

MJ pulls the phone away from her ear for a moment and stares at it, feeling the space between her brows pucker in confusion. It's a New York number, one that she recognizes, only because she called them over and over and over again when she was trying to secure this loan in the first place.

But if it's really the Financial Aid office, shouldn't they know she has a scholarship?

The decision is easier to make when she realizes that they don't. Whatever OsCorp is doing for her, it's not school-sanctioned – in fact it's gone right over the school's heads. She can't take OsCorp's money. This is the way out.

"Miss Watson?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here. Yeah. That's great. Can I come down today to start the paperwork?" she asks, kicking her legs over the bed and scouring the floor for her shoes.

"Of course. We're open until five."

Only as she says this does the implication of the FAFSA really sink in. "Wait," says MJ, but the woman has already hung up.

She sits on the bed and stares at her bare feet, scowling into nothing, absorbing what this means. The FAFSA wouldn't have gone through unless her father finally got his taxes in order. That was the only pivotal factor stopping her from getting any aid, that he claimed her as a dependent, and god only knows what he had done since then to mess up his tax status.

Does that mean he's home?

But if he is he would have gotten in touch with her. He has her number. She knows that they haven't exactly had the best relationship, but he wouldn't just come home and ignore her, and he certainly wouldn't go out of his way to do her any favors without trying to cash in some brownie points for it.

She considers calling May to ask if he's been around, but thinks the better of it. If there were any sign of him back in Queens she is sure May would call her right away.

So where is he? And what does he want from her? The question plagues her all the way to the financial aid office, where she half-expects him to be outside the door, waiting for her, asking for whatever it is he needs.

But in doing this he has essentially granted her freedom – freedom from him, freedom from OsCorp's money, freedom to rely on nobody but herself. He has taken away any advantage he might have, any hold over her he might have used against her. It doesn't make any sense.

She finishes the paperwork and signs her name on the dotted lines anyway. He's alive. That's all she needs to know to keep her conscience clear. She decides not to look for him – if he wants to be a part of her life then he knows where to find her.

Felicia's words are the ones that come to mind: _you do what you have to do to survive_. Well, she will. But this time, it will be on her own terms.

(((())))

The next few weeks pass quickly. MJ ends up landing the job at Louise's friend's club – it is an unusual brand of dancing, a strange hybrid of jazz and burlesque and acrobatics, but MJ has been working her body through the paces since she could walk and manages to pull it off in the audition despite months without having been in a studio.

She wouldn't take the job if she weren't certain of its legitimacy. But the club is actually a ritzy joint, and although the woman running it has a flair for the dramatic and insists on calling MJ "babyface" about as loudly as she can, it's clear that she really cares about the people who work there and that safety is her top priority, both on the dance floor and off of it.

By the time the fall semester starts MJ falls into an easy routine. She works Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at the club, and since all she has to pay for is room and board, she even scrapes up enough spare cash to start taking dance lessons in midtown again. She chooses classes for the fall and buys a bright green desk lamp and notebooks and mechanical pencils and spreads them all out on her bed to admire them, actually excited for school for the first time she can ever remember.

When she looks at herself in the mirror she pats down the frizz from the humidity in her hair, and stands up a little straighter. She feels older. More capable. Optimistic, even. She imagines shedding her high school self like a second skin, and becoming someone else entirely – someone committed, someone focused, someone who throws herself into her life wholeheartedly instead of standing on the fringes, waiting for her turn.

The dancing helps. She gives way to the practiced, familiar rhythms, the sway of her hips, the thrust of her chest, the sweaty whip of her ponytail slapping against her neck, and it is as close to coming home as MJ can ever get.

On the day before classes there's a knock on her door. She assumes it will be her new roommate – she knows nothing about the girl except that her name is Blake and that she is also a New York native – but when she opens it she finds herself staring at one of Peter Parker's hipster band t-shirts.

"Oh. Hey," she says, looking up at him. He's got an arm propped up against her doorframe, and looks marginally better than he did the last time she saw him, not that that is saying much. To be honest she almost forgot he was going to be living here. She's had a lot on her mind.

"Hey," he says. He licks his upper lip and she can tell that he's going to ask her something. "Hi. Uh – "

"Do you need help unpacking? Did you get everything up here already?" she asks, poking her head under the crook of his arm to glance down the hallway.

"No, no, I got it, thanks."

"Oh, okay," she says. She shifts her weight onto her other hip and waits for him to say something, already uncomfortable by the slightest lull in the conversation. She clears her throat to fill the silence, and then asks, "How are you?"

It's a stupid question. She already knows the answer.

"I'm – " To her surprise he doesn't bother lying. He stares at his shoes for a moment and when he looks back up at her his expression is sheepish. "I forgot to sign up for classes," he finally blurts.

"Oh – do you need a computer? I mean, mine's kind of a clunker – "

"Ah, no," he says, with another one of his vague gestures. "No, I mean, I forgot, and then I signed up last night, and the thing is, I have to take a physical elective for the requirement, and I got stuck in World Dance."

MJ feels a smirk creeping up the corners of her lips. "World Dance?"

Peter's expression is both miserable and earnest. "Yeah, I know, so I was thinking – I mean, you like to dance, right, so – "

"You want me to help you pass your dance finals?" MJ asks.

Peter winces. "I was wondering if maybe you wanted to take it too?"

MJ feels her eyes widen in surprise. "World Dance?"

He stares at her without elaborating and then shakes his head. "I know, I know, you've probably already got something lined up – "

"Yeah, I – I signed up for self defense. And my schedule's kind of air tight," she says, without mentioning that she has to carefully plan around a night job where she may or may not be strutting around in a bejeweled bikini for Manhattan's elite.

"Self defense," says Peter, his eyebrows lifting. "Yeah, yeah, that's – that's a great class, you should take that, yeah." He blows out a breath between his top teeth. "Oh well," he says. "Worth a shot."

She feels her stomach throb with guilt. He hasn't needed her for anything for years. And here he is, at her doorstep, his life in shambles, asking for something simple and easy and stupid. She struggles for a moment, looking up at him and wondering if there is anything else she can offer, but he's already taken a step back in that affable, almost clumsy way of his.

"Maybe next semester? We'll suffer through a gen ed together," she says. She doesn't want him to think that she's pushing him away. "You pick."

He smiles, but he's already looking distracted, gone off to some unreachable place again. She watches as he looks at her and tries to bring himself back to the moment at hand. "Neuroscience," he says, with the barest of his usual humor.

MJ laughs, maybe a little too loudly. She hopes it doesn't sound forced. She was just surprised. "You got it."

He nods, more internally than to her, and heads back toward his room. She shuts the door behind her and at once she knows what he must be thinking, in every heavy breath, in every glance at the floor: Gwen was supposed to be here, too. Gwen was supposed to buy textbooks and drink at parties and pick out first-day-of-school outfits, Gwen was supposed to complain about the meal plans and highlight old lectures and remind Peter to schedule his classes.

MJ takes in her messy room and is stricken by the notion of it, of how fast everything could be taken away from her. Just one moment, and Gwen was _gone_. Gwen, the most promising of all of them, would never grow up to be anything more than what she already was.

MJ won't just be successful, she decides. She will be grateful. She will savor every moment of this, knowing how fleeting it all is, knowing that every choice she makes and every day she stays alive has to _count _for something.

And then for a moment she is terrified. As if she is on the precipice of everything she might be, everything she _could_ be, and the pressure of it is so overwhelming that she can't even fathom it. And maybe she should be afraid. She has no idea what she's doing. She is still so stunned that she even made it this far that she doesn't even know what to do with herself now that she's here.

The only comfort is knowing that this time, she isn't alone. All through high school, even when she was surrounded by the cheer team or the dance club or hanging out at one of Flash's stupid parties, she was still somehow separate from them, somehow hiding in plain sight. But now – now she has Peter one room away, and now she has this letter from Harry saying that he still believes in her. And even though they are still as far from her as they have been these past few years, she feels some hopeful shift in the distance, some compelling force that is bringing them all together again.

It makes her feel redeemable, in some way. High school wasn't a life sentence. She feels it in the thrum of the city, in the promise of autumn, in the smell of used textbooks and ink. She doesn't need anyone's approval – not her father's, or the cliquey, privileged girls at Midtown. She is going to make something of herself. She just doesn't know what it is quite yet.

(((())))

Blargh, sorry the updates are coming slow. I've been bonkers busy. Fun fact: I've been walking several miles to and from a cafe to write this and my original fiction and this week I passed a cop who one hundred percent tried to bust me for skipping out of the high school down the street (friends, for those of you who don't know that I'm a sad barely employed post-graduate dragging her psych degree around like the rotting carcass of an unfortunate animal, NOW YOU KNOW). So anyway in the end I didn't get arrested for skipping a school I haven't attended in five years which is always indicative of a good week.

I'm going to try and get the next one up faster - I've also been auditioning like crazy (I have a callback tomorrow! IT INVOLVES DANCING god help me god help every one of us) but the good news is I'm always sitting in the holding rooms typing fanfiction like the secret little freak I am. THANKS FOR READING, I hope you are all surviving your finals! I BELIEVE IN YOU!


	5. Chapter 5

Birds of a Feather

"Uh, are you aware that literally the hottest guys on the hall are literally one wall away from us? I mean _damn_. Co-ed dorms. This just turned into a straight up brothel."

MJ is only half-listening to her new roommate. Blake is strewn out on her bed, stretching lazily, flipping through a biology textbook for her nursing classes. It's the second day of school and her second day of Blake and it's really not that bad, most of the time. Blake is a little – well, sheltered. She had the perfect little two-parents-three-siblings-and-a-dog family that MJ has only ever seen in Hallmark cards, and even though she technically grew up in the city, she has little to no idea of what's actually going on in it.

Which wouldn't be so bad, if she weren't hell-bent on making up for all the lost time my scouring every club and frat party in a fifty block radius willing to serve her underage. MJ only met her yesterday morning, sunny and chipper and bright, and the next time she saw her was at two in the morning, when she came home decidedly drunk and very confused about what to do with herself.

Blake seems like a nice girl. She has matching pajama sets and bed sheets with horses on them and MJ really wants to like her. It's just that she didn't sign up for a year-long babysitting gig.

"The door says Derek and Peter. I wonder which one is which?"

"Hmm?"

"Derek and Peter. Those hot guys next door."

MJ barks out a laugh. "Peter?"

Blake perks up on her bed, her big brown eyes widening almost manically. "You know him?"

"Yeah," says MJ, without looking up from the play she's been skimming for good monologue material. She taps her fingers on the desk and tries to salvage some memory of whatever Blake said before she mentioned Peter's name. Something about a brothel.

"Is he single?"

MJ's expression must be pained, because Blake immediately shrinks at the sight of it.

"Oh, god. Is he like your boyfriend or something? I'm sorry. Awkward. Forget I – "

"No, no," says MJ.

"Then what?"

MJ hesitates, a poising a breath to explain and then releasing it. It's not as if what happened to Gwen is some kind of secret. It wouldn't take anyone with internet access very long to look up Peter's profile and see the pictures of them together, see the comments people have left on them since her death. But still, it feels as if his story isn't hers to tell – she has no idea how he's going to handle this with school. If he would rather stay private in his grief and endure life as normally as possible, or if he would rather people know, to avoid girls like Blake hitting on him in the hallway on his way back from the showers.

She compromises with half of the truth. "We're friends. He's going through a rough time right now."

"Oh. Gotcha," says Blake. She is at least socially aware enough not to pry any further than that.

MJ turns her attention back to the play, or at least she tries. She can't help but consider Blake's assessment of Peter – if she thinks about it, she guesses he's good-looking enough. Like, even when they were kids you could tell he was going to be one of those cute nerdy types when he got older.

But she grew up with Peter. She has no context for _hot_ with him. He's just Peter to her, the same way he's always been, the same way he always will be.

She shakes her head and knuckles down to start reading again. Let Blake waste her time chasing boys. MJ has more important things ahead.

((()))

That night MJ doesn't finish performing until one in the morning. She walks out, flushed and exhausted, she and one of the other dancers escorted by a member security until they reach their subway stop.

Now that everyone has moved in for the semester MJ doesn't come home to total quiet the way she did before. The study room in the middle of the floor is lit up with kids who have their feet propped up on the desk, having late night philosophical discussion and eating Fritos from the vending machine. The television is on in the rec room with some zombified freshmen staring at it.

She opens the door to her room and is unsurprised that Blake is gone. Just as she is about to shut it behind her she hears the door to the room next to them click open and slam almost as fast – when she glances over she sees Peter's retreating back.

There is something desperate in the way he walks, in the erratic length of his strides, in his crooked posture. She almost calls out to him. It's way too late on a Thursday night for him to be headed anywhere he should.

He heads straight for the door to the stairs and pushes it open. She doesn't realize she's following him until the door starts to close and almost slams in her face – she slips through before it does, so he doesn't hear the sound of the door creaking open again, so he doesn't know that she's hot on his heels and following him down the stairs.

By the time she reaches the bottom floor the lobby is empty. She tears out into the street and looks to either side of the dorm. She is surrounded by girls in their form-fitting dresses and painted faces and curled hair – MJ is a sight to see next to them, her face freshly scrubbed from getting all of the crazy, sparkling stage make-up off, clad in her baggiest jeans and a t-shirt. She spots Peter already a block away and the crowds of girls seem to part for her as she runs after him, staring at her with a mixture of curiosity and distaste.

"Peter," she calls after him.

He doesn't even flinch. He keeps walking and she thinks he genuinely must not have heard her, even though she is yelling after him. As her legs pump under her and her lungs start to ache with the effort she starts feeling foolish – she's chasing him. She's actually _chasing_ him, and he's probably walking down the street to buy milk or something, and she has now stalked him down the stairs, out into the street, and across two entire city blocks.

She's going to catch up to him without any explanation and make a total ass of herself. She's fully counting on how the next few minutes of her life will unfold: Peter will turn around, a little alarmed but politely trying to brush it off. He'll talk about classes or the weather and invite her wherever the hell he's going because he's a nice guy, not the kind of guy who will call attention to the fact that she has followed him because she had some ridiculous hunch something might be wrong.

Finally she is close enough to reach out to him. "Peter," she says. She means to reach out and touch his shoulder, but he stops this time and her shoulder barrels into his upper arm.

When he turns to her his face is almost savage. He shrugs her off of him, and the gesture is so rough and unlike him that she steps back, pulling herself away.

"Whoa," she says, out of reflex.

His eyes soften when he recognizes her, but the rest of him is still tense, poised to get away. "Sorry."

She opens her mouth to say something but her throat is dry. "Where are you going?" she manages after a moment, rooted to the cement, staring at this boy that she hardly recognizes.

Peter stares back at her and tries, she thinks, to make some sort of reassuring expression, but his face is wilting, his brows crumpling, his lips in a tight and uncertain line. His eyes are bloodshot. He's been crying.

"I'm just – " He points vaguely up the block, but the more he tries to keep up the charade the faster he starts falling apart. "I'm only – "

"Peter," she says, her voice low and careful.

He finally looks at her and sucks in a wretched breath. "I can't do this." He presses a hand up to his face, shaking his head, swaying on his feet. "I can't be here, I can't do this, I can't."

She is paralyzed, unsure what to say, how to help him. Anything that comes to mind is useless: she can't tell him he'll be okay. He won't be. She can't tell him that she understands, she can't tell him shake it off, she can't tell him anything but the only truth she can salvage.

"You can," she says quietly. "It won't be easy, but you can."

He shakes his head harder, running his hands through his hair, erratic and distressed. He is like an untethered balloon – the more upset he becomes the further he seems from her, the less she can reach him.

"I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Coming here – being here – I – " His voice cracks and he says, "This isn't where I'm supposed to be_,_ I was going to _England_, we were going to be _together_."

Every other time she has seen him since the funeral she has been so careful around him, so cautious. As long as he wasn't openly acknowledging it, neither would she. She thought that she was sparing him. She thought that he wanted to be alone in his grief. But now that she sees him, so desperate, spilling over the edge, she sees that she was wrong. He needs someone. Even if he doesn't realize it, it's plain in the anguish in his voice, the question in his eyes: _What am I supposed to do?_

"I'm so sorry, Peter," she says, her throat tight with the thought of what he has lost. She reaches out but she is scared to touch him, scared of how he will react. She doesn't want to scare him away when he's in this state.

"I've gotta – I'm leaving," he says, and then he starts walking again so abruptly that she has to run to keep up.

"Where are you going?" she asks.

Peter doesn't even turn his head to look at her. "Go back to the dorm."

"No," she says. "Whatever it is you're doing right now – I'm not going to let you."

His reply is surprisingly fast, and surprisingly angry. "Why?" he demands. "I mean _Jesus_, Mary Jane, what do you even care? We haven't spoken in years, we're not even _friends_, you made that pretty clear when you – "

"_Peter!_"

She yanks him by the arm and pulls him out of the way just as a cab comes barreling through the intersection. His weight hits her like a wall and she stumbles backward, only steadying when Peter regains enough of his wits to pull her back to her feet.

For a few awkward, excruciating moments their chests are pressed together and she can hear them both breathing, strained and panicked, still hovering on the side of the road. As they separate she crushes her eyes shut, the impact of his words hitting like a brick to her stomach.

He whips back around to stare at the headlights of the cab as they disappear into the darkness, and then back at her, his mouth hanging open and his eyes manic. "I'm sorry," he says.

She clutches her arms to her chest. "No," she says lightly. "That's fair."

"Just please," he says, and he doesn't have to finish for her to know that he's asking her to leave him alone.

She doesn't have a choice. He's turning on his heels and disappearing in the throng of drunk college kids and even if she could keep up, she doesn't know what good it would do. He's right. They're not really friends, are they? She's been clinging to this old sense of self lately, now that she's been so uprooted that she has no other way to define herself, but it wasn't until he said it that she was forced to face the truth: They aren't friends, and they haven't been for a long time.

He was so angry with her. She has often wondered back on that pivotal time between middle school and high school, the year that they slowly, subtly, interminably grew apart. In her mind they shared the blame for it. Now she wonders if it was more her fault than his.

She walks back to the dorm, her heart heavy, her feet dragging. She doesn't want to go back. She doesn't want to sit in her empty room and stare up at the ceiling and relive these past few moments where she said all the wrong things to him over and over – or the past few years, when she said nothing at all.

((()))

Peter doesn't come back to the dorm by the next morning. MJ knocks on his door Friday afternoon and his roommate – Derek, she assumes – answers, clearly high off his rocker, and tells her he hasn't seen Peter all day.

There's a party at Flash's place that night. MJ wouldn't go, but it occurs to her that Peter might. She knows that they formed some fragile sort of friendship after Peter's uncle died – it was long after MJ and Flash had broken up, so she never knew that much about it, but there was always a chance Peter might be invited and decide to show up. She finishes her shift at the club around one in the morning, changes into jeans and a fitted tank top and heads toward the Upper East Side.

Flash's parents were always as rich as they were negligent, and MJ can see when she arrives that that hasn't changed since the last time she was here. His parents are, unsurprisingly, out of town, and their huge, expansive loft is brimming with drunk undergraduates and a few Midtown kids who haven't graduated yet.

One of the football players she made out with once under the bleachers in the most cliché manner possible, back in the early days when she was in high school cheer and unabashedly reaping all of the benefits that came with it, immediately hands her a beer when she walks in. She smiles and thanks him, and starts nursing it, trying not to look too obvious when she scopes the crowd out for Peter.

She does a few laps of the party. She sees a few people she knows and breezes past them, avoiding eye contact. The trouble is these people's opinions used to matter so much to her. She would stay awake long into the night accessorizing her outfits to make them look more expensive, wake up early and elaborately blow dry her hair, and then go to school and maintain a flimsily constructed web of lies about her father's job and her mother's suicide and her postgraduate plans.

They weren't worth any of it. She understands it now more than ever, as she stands at this party looking for Peter, the price of it all.

"Thought this wasn't your scene anymore."

There were plenty of nice girls on the team when MJ was doing cheer. Patricia was not one of them.

"Hey, Patricia," she says.

"If you're looking for Neil, then you're out of luck. We're dating now."

MJ scowls. "Neil?"

Patricia rolls her eyes. "Oh, please," she says. "I saw you guys necking junior year after the homecoming game."

It is truly a testament to her misguided high school years that she can't remember who Neil is for the life of her. She suddenly feels like her skin is crawling. She needs to get out of here, away from the ghost of her former self, lurking in every corner, reflecting in every glass.

Peter isn't here. She's seen enough to know. She wonders why she thought he would be here in the first place – she supposes it would be where she would run. How many times in high school did she sneak out of the house on a Friday night to lose herself in this music, in the glittery tops and the sour beer and meaningless conversation, to distract herself from everything else?

She finds Flash to tell him goodbye. He's the only part of high school she doesn't entirely regret. He may not have been the nicest guy around when they first started dating, but he was always kind to her, and he grew up a lot by the time they all graduated.

It's too loud in the loft for small talk. "You're fine to get home?" he yells over the music.

She nods. "I'm close."

"Be careful," he says. His eyes flit to the floor and then back at her. "Spidey isn't around anymore."

The party rages on, but a solemn understanding passes between them. Nobody really knows how to feel about Spider-Man. Not after what happened.

She lied to Flash. She isn't close. It's a long walk home, but MJ needs it. She doesn't put on her headphones, letting herself be alone in her thoughts, listening to the clack of her shoes on the pavement, the whir of air conditioning units in the windows, the shuffle of strangers walking past.

In the distance she can see OsCorp, high and mighty, like the older brother of every building around it. She remembers being a little girl and watching it from Queens as it rose higher and higher into the sky. Every morning she would jump up on her parents' bed – the view from their window was much better, all she could see from hers was Peter's – and check to see how much further it had stretched overnight.

To her it seemed magical. How fast it climbed, how beautiful it looked, all clean lines and bright lights and metal. They went there on a field trip once and the inside was every bit as astounding. She smiles to herself now, remembering how bored Harry was, and how determined he was even then to get into trouble by trying to ditch the group.

How strange, that he is so inaccessible now. That he can track her down easily but she doesn't have a phone number for him, she doesn't know where he lives or who he spends his time with or if he's even planning to go to college. She supposes college is redundant for someone in charge of an empire like OsCorp.

Still, she thinks she would feel better if she could just see him again. The both of them. Peter, Harry, and MJ. Could that child who found magic in faraway skyscrapers ever have imagined a future without them?

She hears something clicking in the distance and turns her head toward the noise. When she doesn't see anything she almost dismisses it, but then it gets louder and more frequent.

She hears someone gasp before she sees it: it looks like a shadow, flying through the night, swinging in between the buildings on a thick black cord. It's moving fast, propelling itself so effortlessly that her heart leaps into her throat. The only person who could do that is Spider-Man. For better or for worse, he's _back_.

But then she hears another clink, synchronous with the extension of the cord. It's not a web. It's – it's got some sort of metal hook, and the cord is winding and unwinding itself as it goes, propelling the shadow forward.

"Spider-Man!" someone calls out into the night.

But the shadow passes them, the whistle of it dipping low and then shooting back up the fire escape down the block. She sees barely anything more than sleek black leather and boots and a shock of white hair, but MJ is certain of only one thing: It isn't Spider-Man.

It's a _woman_.

((()))

I have good news and bad news - the good news is I got an awesome internship! The bad news is I got an awesome internship. Which means slightly less time for writings. THANK YOU for reading and reviewing, it makes my day :) :). I hope wherever you are the weather is as freaking beautiful as it is where I am. I also hope wherever you are there is cake.


	6. Chapter 6

Birds of a Feather

On Monday MJ walks into the first session of her self-defense class and her first words are, "What are you _doing_ here?"

Felicia looks at her sternly, clad in sneakers, black leggings and a sports bra, her dark hair tucked into a neat ponytail without one loose fray. MJ stares back at her, a little breathless from running up the stairs to get to class in time, and after a moment she is excruciatingly aware of everyone staring at her.

"If you'd arrived on time," says Felicia, "you would have heard me explain to the rest of the class here that your instructor is on maternity leave, and that I will be filling in for her for the fall semester."

MJ feels her shoulders shrinking into herself as everyone continues to scrutinize her. It's so quiet. She's so embarrassed that she feels like there's a giant spotlight on her. "Oh," she says lamely, even though this explanation isn't near sufficient enough. She shuffles toward the back of the room to an empty corner.

"I understand some of you might be disappointed. I know you were expecting to learn from Professor Pinola this semester. But rest assured," says Felicia, her eyes grazing them coolly, "that during my time here at Empire State, I mastered every technique Pinola was able to teach me, and I am entirely confident in my ability to teach these techniques to anyone in this class who is truly here to learn."

MJ tears her eyes away from Felicia to glance at her peers. The class is mostly women – a few of them looking mousy and uncertain in the back with her, a few of them bolder and more athletic in the front. There are only three boys in the class, two of them looking sheepish, the other one about the size that Peter was when they were twelve and blinking behind a large pair of glasses.

"This is a self-defense class, not a combat class. This semester we will focus on several realistic scenarios you may encounter, and how to escape by doing the maximum amount of damage as quickly as possible, and then running. Our focus is not to fight back. It's to escape." She pauses, and then the barest of smirks curls on her lips. "Anyone who is interested in methods of combat, I am happy to recommend other courses you can take once you have completed this one."

It's then that MJ notices the tautness in the muscle on Felicia's skinny arms, the ripple in her thigh. She has always felt vaguely intimidated since she met Felicia, but she assumed that it had to do with her impeccable way of dressing or her overwhelmingly spacious office. Now that she's seeing her in her element, though, she thinks that it must have been something else entirely.

"I have several rules in this class. One: safety first. If I have to send any of you to student health services it's either because you weren't listening, or you've done something wrong." She raises her eyebrows and stares at them all in turn. MJ is careful not to look away when her eyes graze past her.

"Second rule: get over yourself. There is going to be a lot of intimacy in this class. We are going to be running realistic scenarios and that occasionally means you're going to be a lot closer to your partners than you're comfortable with. If that's going to be a problem, I recommend you drop the course now." She stares right at the back row, toward the girls who looked the most nervous when MJ walked in. "You have every right to feel self-conscious – but if you are going to be silly or immature about it, you aren't going to learn a damn thing, and more importantly, neither will anyone else."

A few of the students start to shuffle on the mats, glancing around at each other sheepishly.

"Third rule: this is not a blow off class. You will come to class prepared with the readings I've outlined in the syllabus. You will have completely any assignments from the workbook. You will be here, _on time_, every Monday at two o'clock – "

The door bursts open with a clamor louder than a gunshot. At first MJ doesn't even look up, out of empathy for whoever just managed the worst-timed late entrance in undergraduate history. The humiliation of enduring everyone staring at her only a minute prior is still fresh in her mind.

Then she hears an all too familiar, fumbling voice: "I'm sorry. I'm late. I'm sorry."

Felicia's nostrils twitch distastefully at none other than Peter Parker, who has come stumbling in wearing a pair of high school gym shorts that say "Midtown" and a t-shirt with a pun about clocks.

"Find a mat," she says impatiently.

"Right," says Peter, awkwardly glancing out at the class in search of one. He sees her and gives her a tentative, guilty wave. She can already see the irritation on Felicia's face, so she nods back at him, cocking her head toward the only other empty mat clear on the other side of the room.

He passes her when he walks toward it. "Talk after class?" he asks. The room is small enough that practically everyone hears him ask, but Peter hasn't always been the most socially aware individual.

She nods again and she sees him hesitating before he passes, so she intentionally glances away. She doesn't want him to think she's angry, but she also doesn't want to get on Felicia's bad side on the first day of class any more than she already has by engaging him any further.

"Today's class will be individual, so no need to partner up," says Felicia. "We'll be learning basic kickboxing moves, focusing on power and agility, and once you're all comfortable we'll start learning combinations."

She leads them through jabs, crosses, hooks, and uppercuts. All of Felicia's movements are grounded and powerful – in comparison MJ feels sloppy, and has the fear that everything she is doing with her arms looks exactly the same when she is trying her best to differentiate between the moves. Felicia walks through the room to correct them individually, changing their posture or the angle of their arms, but MJ is not nervous under her scrutiny. It's Peter's she is worried about.

He is behind her, but she can feel his eyes on her, watching through the entire class. She is queasy with anticipation, knowing that they're going to have to talk after class, knowing that whatever he is doing here, she is responsible for it. Peter has never been one for subtlety. They could just hash it out like normal people who live next door to each other and pass each other back and forth from the showers, but no, he has to go change his entire class schedule around and pop up out of the blue instead.

"I know it doesn't seem like much," says Felicia, as the class winds down to the end, "but most of you are going to be sore tomorrow. It may not always be action-packed and exciting in this class, but by the end of it I promise you, you'll be able to defend yourself against just about anything."

MJ rolls her shoulders back and relaxes for the first time since the top of the hour, and hears one girl say to her friend, "Yeah, like against that chick imitating Spider-Man."

"What?" MJ and Peter ask at the same time.

The girl looks at the both of them, surprised they were eavesdropping from different corners of the room. "You know. The robber. They're calling her the Black Cat, or something."

Felicia snorts. "Typical. Can't give credit to a woman for doing anything without comparing her to a man."

The room clears out quickly after that, everyone jostling each other to get their backpacks and get to their next class or to lunch. MJ lingers, certain that Peter will want to talk to her, but he looks suddenly agitated. He grips the strap of his shoulder bag with both hand, watching the door, the retreating backs of their classmates as they spill into the hall.

"So much for World Dance?" says MJ lightly.

Peter blinks and looks over at her. "Oh. Well," he says, with some of the crookedness returning to his smile, the way it was when they were kids. "I hope you don't mind or anything."

"No, not at all." She fiddles with the seam of her shirt, pushing it down self-consciously, suddenly aware of the sweat stains on her back. "I'm just – well, I'm glad to see you."

Peter cringes. "The other night … "

"Peter, it's fine. Really."

"It's not," he says, "and I want to – I've got – " He blows out a breath, staring at the door. He rubs the back of his neck, looking jumpy, uneasy. She almost asks him what's wrong, but he collects himself before she can. "I want to talk to you. But I've got to go right now."

"We don't have to talk, Pete – "

"We do. We will. I just – there's something I need to take care of. Will you be at the dorm tonight?"

"Yeah," she says, even though she wasn't planning to be. She tries not to wince, imagining herself waiting all evening for him to knock on her door. The thought of it is kind of pathetic and a little too reminiscent of her high school days for her taste. But Peter isn't like that, and neither is she.

"Okay."

He leaves with his head ducked down, already buried deep into some thought that has nothing to do with her. She stands there and watches him go, and by the time she follows him out the hallways are empty, and he's nowhere to be seen.

Once she hits the street she sees a newspaper stand displaying a blurry, barely distinguishable picture. _Who is the Black Cat?_ the headline screams. She walks over to it, squinting at the picture, skimming the article. This has to be the flying shadow, the woman she saw darting between buildings on her way home from Flash's party the other night. And now, judging by the headlines on all the other papers, she has become a sensation overnight.

"You read, you buy," the man at the newsstand barks at her.

"Sorry," MJ mutters. She doesn't have a smart phone so she'll have to wait until she gets home to look her up and find out more.

Blake isn't in the room, by the mercy of god, when MJ returns. She tugs her sweaty hair into a loose bun and pulls open her laptop, searching the words "Black Cat." She is almost embarrassed by how many hits it generates. Article after article with vivid detail and coverage of a bank heist that happened last weekend, followed up by a museum break in the night after – MJ reads through them all and stares at the blurry, unhelpful pictures that accompany them. With all of her worries about Peter and juggling her new job with classes she must be living under a rock.

She's still poring over articles and watching shaky footage when Blake returns from dinner.

"We should go out tonight. Come on. Please? Maybe?"

MJ glances at the door. "I can't."

"Why? You're a theater major. Don't tell me you already have homework."

MJ scowls at the insinuation. "Of course I do. And besides, I have auditions tomorrow, I can't spend the whole night – "

"Just for an hour, then. Later tonight."

"I – " She doesn't want to tell her the truth. That she's sitting here waiting for a boy to knock on their door. It may just be Peter, but she has no way of knowing what that means. "Maybe," she concedes.

Blake grins. "You won't regret it!"

"I haven't agreed to anything," MJ mutters, pulling out her textbooks.

A few hours pass. She is listening for the sounds of footsteps in the hallway, for the telltale creak of the door next to theirs. No Peter. She isn't exactly surprised. In fact, she is irritated with herself for how unsurprised she is, how well she anticipated it. She is used to being an afterthought.

She flattens out the pages to the play she is reading and tries to focus. She shouldn't be annoyed with Peter. He doesn't owe her anything, and besides, he has an unimaginable burden to deal with right now. So he forgot about her. So what? He was right the other night, no matter what motivated him to say it, no matter whether he meant it or not: they aren't really friends. Not the way they used to be. And just because they were doesn't mean that either of them is obligated to fix it.

They're different people now. Peter is smart and brooding and quirky and she's … fun. Adventurous. Maybe too much for her own good.

By eleven o'clock it feels like her skin is itching, like a too-tight pair of jeans that need stretching out.

"Alright. Let's go," says MJ, shutting the play closed with almost violent resolve.

Blake's head snaps up from her computer. "For real? Right now?"

"Right now," says MJ, shimmying out of her shorts. There is an instantaneous and startling relief in rifling through her closet, in finding something short and shimmery to wear, in sliding her feet into a familiar pair of strappy heels. It feels like armor. It feels like slipping into a practiced and beautiful kind of _numb_.

Her hair is wild from the humidity so she rakes her hands through it and makes it even worse, embracing the craziness of it. She is ready in less than two minutes and already agitated, impatient to leave, as if she is losing a race.

The door to Peter's room is shut when she and Blake lock theirs for the night and head out, cell phones and fake IDs in hand. She passes it without even glancing. She holds her head up high and walks past the incredulous stares from people in the study cubicles, sitting in their pajamas. They have their way of relaxing and she has hers.

Blake isn't really all that bad once they are out together. MJ has always gone to clubs like this with two priorities: drink, and dance. She has no interest in flirting, no interest in making friends, no interest in playing tour guide to the tourists who bumble into places like this and try to impress New Yorkers talking about their fancy lawyer jobs in Ohio or California or wherever the hell they've come from. And Blake either shares this mindset or adapts to it fast enough that she actually makes good company.

At the beginning of the night they each take two shots of tequila – it burns all the way down from her chest to her stomach and at once everything is buzzing and warm. She takes to the dance floor like a rocket. She is grateful for the crowd, for the anonymity, for the bodies of strangers that bump and graze and slam around them. She closes her eyes and it feels like they could swallow her whole, every last part of her, every worry and doubt and disappointment, and the world wouldn't even notice she had gone.

It's true, isn't it? Nobody's waiting for her. She is untethered, unbound, unloved. They take a few more shots and MJ is distantly aware that she's going to regret it in the morning, but right now there is a pulse on the dance floor thrumming in her fingertips, hypnotizing her, compelling her to move until she feels like a rag doll, thoughtless and limbless and spent.

They spill back out into the street around two in the morning. Blake tumbles into her, wrapping an arm around her companionably, and they almost capsize in their heels right there on the sidewalk.

"See?" she yells, even though they're on the street now and there's no music to shout over. "You had fun!"

"Shhh," says MJ, pressing a finger to her mouth and casting a wary glance at the apartments above them. "Yeah, yeah, I did."

The closer they get to the dorms the more the magic of it seems to wear off. She knows herself well enough to know what happens next. Eventually her heart stops pounding and her ears stop ringing and she is left in the quiet of her own thoughts. It doesn't matter what she does. All roads lead right back to here.

She is exhausted and still a little bit punch-drunk when they round the corner to the dorms.

"Holy shit," says Blake, stopping in her tracks.

There are at least four cop cars outside of their dorms, the lights blaring so brightly that they feel like their piercing MJ's eyes. She casts an arm over her face to shield herself.

"What the fuck happened?" says Blake, starting to walk over.

MJ yanks her back. "We can't go in there," she hisses. "You're _drunk_."

"So?"

"And underage – "

"But my fake – "

"In a _freshman dorm_," MJ reminds her.

Blake bites her lip and stares past them for a moment. "Shit," she says. "Shit, I need to pee."

MJ thumbs her phone, suddenly alert, her mind whirring to find an exit strategy. There isn't anybody she can call. Even if she could scrape together enough cash to get them into a youth hostel, it's way too late at night for that kind of thing.

"Let's go," says Blake, turning around as a few cops get out of their cars, but MJ is rooted to the pavement.

Peter never came to her door. Peter never came to her door and now there is some serious law enforcement camped outside their dorm. She scrambles to unlock her phone – she doesn't have his contact information saved, but when he called her a few weeks ago to help her move in his number must have stayed in the history – but as soon as she unlocks it she sees three missed calls and a voicemail and she recognizes his number at once.

So he's okay. Or he must be, if he's been calling for the last hour. She feels her stomach churn, both in irritation and relief. He did remember her after all. Just a whole lot later than he said he would.

She punches redial and he picks up on the first ring.

"Where _are _you?"

She follows Blake around the corner, pressing a finger to her other ear so she can hear him better. "Outside the dorm. What's going on?"

"Outside the dorm? Doing _what?_ It's a Monday night – "

"I could ask you the same thing," she huffs. It slips right out of her as easily as the tequila went down. She cringes. "I mean – "

"Are you drunk?"

A beat passes and she feels her entire face grow hot. "No."

"But you've been drinking."

She wants to tell him it's none of his business but that sounds too petty. "What the hell is going on in the dorm?"

The phone crackles for a moment, and MJ can hear someone else talking. "Derek says they're leaving. The police. It looks like you can come up."

"But what – "

"One of the guys on the floor below us got beaten up pretty bad," says Peter.

"Oh." MJ doesn't know anybody on the third floor. She grabs Blake and motions for her to follow, and when they turn back onto their street she sees that most of the cars have already driven off, and the others are following. "Well, okay, we're coming back up."

"We?" Peter asks. If she isn't mistaken there is the slightest bit of an edge to his voice.

MJ scans her student ID and unlocks the front door. "My roommate went out with me."

"Oh. Well, good. You shouldn't go out by yourself."

She is grateful she is still several floors away from him so he doesn't see her colossal eye roll. "I'm about to lose service in the stairwell, I've gotta go," she says, just in time for the phone to cut out.

On the way up Blake is yammering about a whole bunch of texts she is only now reading from other people in the hall, debriefing her on what happened. MJ feels a momentary pang, some flutter of sadness, when she sees all the texts light up on Blake's screen. Blake already has friends here. It's barely been a week, and already MJ has somehow ostracized herself, somehow managed to immortalize High School MJ despite vowing up and down that she would never be that girl again.

It's pathetic, but she's exhausted and a little bit rough around her edges from the alcohol, and she actually thinks for a moment that she might cry.

Blake throws the door to the fourth floor open to a hallway spilling with students, staring out the windows and gesturing animatedly, all of them wound up with the excitement of the cop cars. There is only one calm pillar in the storm: Peter, leaning against the wall, staring at her uninhibitedly as she walks in.

He looks exhausted. He always does.

"Hey," he says. "I, uh …"

She curls her lips into her teeth. She doesn't want to tiptoe around conversations with him anymore. If he's allowed to get real then she is, too.

"Where were you?" she asks.

His eyebrows lift in surprise. For a moment he lets the question hang in the air, rubbing at his elbow absent-mindedly with the opposite hand. She wonders if he's going to lie to her. Even when they were kids he was horrible at it.

"Busy," he finally says.

She knows she has no real reason to be upset with him, but she feels some part of herself start to crumble. She is trying here. She really is. She is trying harder than she is willing to try with most people, with _anyone_, because he's Peter and she's MJ and that has to count for something. It did once. It _did_.

Over the summer she convinced herself that she would come to college and make new friends, good friends this time, the kind that didn't sell Adderall and have sex with strangers and steal for fun. She thought it was a matter of making choices. That she could make friends with good people if she made better ones this time around.

This is her lot in life, maybe. Something about her repels people. She sees it now in the way Peter's eyes linger on the floor, as if he cannot bear to look at her.

He didn't understand last week, maybe, but he knows now. She's no good.

"Alright," she says lightly. She smiles. "Good night, Peter."

He opens his mouth, takes in a breath, gestures in that helpless way of his – but she deflects it before he can finish, shutting her door behind her. She shuts off the light and sags onto her mattress, pressing her face into the cool pillow, wishing she could just cry instead of enduring this dry, persistent misery.

She should have been nicer to Peter. He called her three times. He's trying, too.

The thought of it makes her feel even worse, and she lays there for so long, paralyzed in her self-pity, that she is just starting to drift off into an uneasy sleep when Blake finally comes back into the room.

"You awake?" Blake whispers.

"Mm."

"That kid downstairs? The one who got beaten up? Apparently he was coming back from the Dean's office – from talking about a rape charge."

MJ scowls into her pillow, rolling her body toward Blake and blinking into the dim light. "What?"

"I know, right?" says Blake, stripping out of her dress and thong and tossing them on the floor. She roots around in the dark for her pajamas. "He's living right downstairs of us and he _rapes_ a girl. It's the first week of school, for fuck's sake. Anyway, he got what he deserved."

"What?" MJ asks, trying to wrap her head around it.

"It was the Black Cat." Blake's eyes are glittering in the dark. "She beat the shit out of him."

(((()))))

I have not slept in approximately since whenever the last chapter of this was updated. I love you all. The internship is adulthood to the bajillionth power. I've learned so many things in these first few days, including and not limited to: Never wear heels on the metro. Especially never wear heels on the first day when people are gung-ho about giving you very long walking tours. Also, never open a pungent banana at your desk. Most importantly, Never Ever Forget Your Headphones, because then you can't pretend not to be able to hear crazy people yelling things at you.

This unwarranted advice brought to you by a post-graduate mess.


	7. Chapter 7

Birds of a Feather

MJ doesn't really sleep that night. She's wired from the club, as if she has put her body into some mode that doesn't have an off switch. She is almost relieved when the sun rises and the city starts to whir back to life beneath them and she doesn't have to lie still anymore.

She is lacing up her running sneakers when she hears the door next to theirs creak open and click shut.

She tries to finish lacing her shoes up but her fingers are shaking – she ends up running into the hall with them untied, the laces spitting around her, slapping against her ankles.

"Where are you going?" she bursts, just as Peter is about to head into the stairwell.

He stops. She is sure he is going to be angry when he turns around, or at the very least embarrassed by the volume she just used to accost him, but if he is either of those things he hides it well.

He holds up his skateboard. "Just out."

"Oh," she says. She extends one of her legs, showing him her beat up shoes. "Me too."

The conversation is strained and too polite, the two of them dancing around each other, the rest of it – the hurt and confusion and every part of the last week – smothered in the air between them.

She has to find some way to cut the tension. It's her responsibility. But she is uncertain and self-conscious, wavering in the open hallway, feeling her shoulders curl into her body – she has nothing to say. MJ is full of words except for when they count the most.

"You think you can keep up?" Peter asks.

It takes MJ a moment to understand the implication, and then she laughs. It's dry and a little too loud for the early morning, and she immediately clamps a hand over her mouth, sure that she's just woken up half the hall.

"If you're as bad as I remember then no, I shouldn't have any trouble," she says.

"Whoa. Shots fired," says Peter.

"And mailboxes dented," she says, warming up a little more. There used to be a flow to this. They would tease each other all the time. It feels a little bit like riding a bike with rusty wheels. "How you defied gravity enough to manage that is still beyond me."

"Hey, I was getting better that summer before high school, remember?" he says. "Crash-free since 2010."

"Right," she says, raising her eyebrows. She remembers the beginning of the summer when he was clumsy and bumbling and scraped up his knees enough times to cause an antiseptic shortage in Queens, but she has no memory of him actually possessing any grace on the thing.

For a moment they both stand there, and then, unexpectedly, he loosens up his shoulders and cocks his head for her to follow.

"C'mon."

There is some small forgiveness in it, a quiet in his voice that makes her feel both relieved and a little anxious.

She finishes tying her shoes and follows him. Everything in the stairwell is still and overly bright with the dawn, and when they pass the windows she can feel the heat of the sun on her skin. The echo of their footsteps reaches the tallest parts of the building, and there is something soothing about the rhythm of them, the shared silence between them.

When they hit the street people are already milling around, holding their phones and their thermoses full of coffee like battle armor, quick-footed and tunnel-visioned.

Peter doesn't set the skateboard down, and she doesn't start running.

"I'm sorry about last night," says MJ. She isn't looking at him. The sentiment is so inadequate that it feels like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound, but she takes a breath and adds, "And – and for high school."

Peter shakes his head. "I shouldn't have said that the other night."

"No," she says, "you were right." Her throat feels thick. "I couldn't – I couldn't even tell you why it happened," she says, and as the words fall out of her, as she really thinks about that summer for the first time, it is a struggle to remember it at all. Whatever it was that shifted, that changed between them – she can't remember anything definitive.

Harry left. That's what she remembers most. And after that … it feels like the rest of it just slides away.

Peter lets out a breathy, uncommitted laugh. "I could."

The words aren't accusatory, only resigned. She turns to look up at him and he is staring straight ahead, not into the street but as if he is staring into a void, listless and apathetic.

She has seen Peter upset. She has seen Peter cry, she has seen him throw things, she has seen him rip up pictures and yell and slam his bedroom door. She has seen Peter at his uncle's funeral, beside himself with grief. She grew up beside him. She has seen everything.

But not this. He looks almost hollow, as if she could push him aside with one brush of her hand and he would rise up with the wind. She understands now – he didn't come back because he could manage the pain. He came back because there was no room for it any place else.

"I'm glad you came back," says MJ guardedly. She wants him to know that she cares, but she doesn't want to remind him of his sadness.

His expression hardly changes at all. She imagines the sadness doesn't need reminding – it is just there like a constant companion, closer to him than anything she says will ever be.

He flattens the palm of his hand against one of the wheels on the bottom of the board and pushes at it, moving it back and forth. "I wasn't going to," he admits. He sets his hand back at his side and shakes his head, saying, "It's the stupidest thing."

She waits for him to elaborate, but he seems almost stunned, as if he hadn't meant to say it in the first place.

"What?" she asks after a moment.

He swipes at his nose with his wrist, like a nervous tic. "She would kill me, you know." He laughs and the sound of it, watery and a little desperate, makes her heart seize. He looks at her, his eyes bloodshot and sleepless, and says, "If I quit school, I mean. I just – I was going to leave, I was, and I just thought, no, I know. She'd be so pissed." He stares at the ground. "It's crazy."

"No, it's not," says MJ quietly.

He hums his assent, and she can see his fingers shaking when they weren't before, the vein in his forehead starting to protrude. Reminiscing about high school was safe territory compared to this.

She is struggling to find some way to comfort him but she suddenly hears a clatter. Peter has thrown the board to the ground and has it trapped under his foot, his other foot poised on the pavement.

"You ready?" he says.

The expression on his face is already cracking. She nods before it can, and takes off, slapping her sneakers against the sidewalk, sprinting to keep up with him as he goes. They weave in and out of strangers, staring straight ahead, barely keeping each other in their peripheries as they press further and further away from the campus. She can tell he's trying to keep an even pace with her but even so her lungs are burning with the effort to stay with him, so much that it is her only, all-consuming thought – _Run_. Move. Go.

She thinks that they'll feel better, miles later when they eventually come to a stop. But when they're finally standing outside the dorm and look at each other, gasping and red-faced, it feels like they are in a race where the finish line is constantly moving, always just a few feet ahead.

They can't outrun themselves.

((()))

_"Don't freak out." _

_"Harry … this is in your **house**?" _

_"You said you wouldn't freak out." _

_"I'm not! Jeez. I'm just saying. There's a room full of spiders in your house." _

_She is back in the room in the Osborn mansion that she dreamed of before, dark and wide, the equipment around them humming softly. The closer they get to the glass tubes the more compelled MJ is to stare – she has never seen this many spiders in her entire life. They weave and crawl and spin on top of each other, through a landscape of shimmering webs, more taut and thick than any spider web she can remember. _

_"What is it for?" she asks. She spins around, awed, and sees that there are more of them. _

_Harry's face comes into focus, his eyes so wide that they glimmer like overly-large moons in the darkness. "That's the thing. I have no idea." _

_MJ shudders, folding her arms into her chest. "I'm glad I don't live here. Yuck. Don't you ever worry about them getting out at night or something?" She leans in closer to Harry, shrinking away from the glass, and says, "Like, you're sleeping and then all of a sudden something itches and you wake up and find a bajillion spiders in your bed – "_

_"My dad would never let that happen," says Harry. "Besides. Someone has to let them out. They can't get out on their own. See?" _

_She squints in the dim light as Harry leads her over to a control panel. There's a monitor regulating all sorts of numbers, temperatures and weights and a dozen other things that MJ doesn't understand. She approaches it warily, grazing her fingers over the screen. _

_"Don't touch it," says Harry, yanking her back by the elbow. _

_She stumbles and rights herself. He tries to mask the blatant fear on his face but she looks up at him before he can. _

_"You're scared," she says. _

_He scowls at her. "Of course I'm not. I just don't want to get in trouble." _

_"Since when?" _

_"I'm not scared," says Harry, louder this time, so that his voice echoes through the room and slaps back at them. He takes a step back from the monitor, cringing. _

_MJ deflates. She shouldn't make fun of him. He didn't even have to show her this in the first place. "Sorry." _

_"It's not like it's hard to do," he says gruffly, not quite looking at her. "All you have to do is press this button. It pulls one of them out in a tube." _

_"You've done it before?" she asks. _

_Harry curls his lips into his teeth. "Well, no. But my dad let me into a different lab once, for something they were harvesting from worms, and the monitor was almost the exact same." He looks at her from the edges of his eyes and says, "I could do it, you know." _

_"Harry …" _

_"It's easy. See?" He steps forward and presses two fingers on the console, dragging one of the icons to the edge of the screen. A question flashes on the screen, and Harry presses "yes" before MJ can even read it. _

_Instantly she hears the machinery whirring above them. There is a crane attached to a device on the ceiling, and it descends into one of the spider columns the way amusement park prize machines pluck out cheap toys. MJ watches, transfixed, as the crane lowers itself in and sucks one of the spiders up into a clear tube. _

_It only takes a few seconds for the crane to lower it back down and deposit it on a small raised surface a few feet away from them. _

_"Whoa," says MJ. Up close it is startling to behold, with a series of red marks on its back, its eyes and each one of its legs perfectly defined. She feels the slightest quiver of fear at the base of her spine. It is both menacing and beautiful. She wants to look away but every time she tries there is some new and unexpected severity to it, the way it moves and watches and curls in and out of itself. _

_She's had enough. "How do we put it back?" she asks, tearing her eyes away. _

_Harry sets his fingertips back on the console. "If you just press this – "_

_"Harry!" _

_The lid to the tube is lifting. Before it's even raised a centimeter the spider flies out and topples over to the ground, scurrying away. _

_"Fuck," Harry exclaims, the word sounding ridiculous coming out of his prepubescent mouth. He jumps away from the console. _

_"What did you do?" MJ demands. _

_"I didn't do anything!" Harry yells back, his eyes watering, his chin starting to quake. He looks at MJ helplessly, and then back at the floor. "We've gotta find it." _

_"No. Let's just leave," MJ says breathily, feeling the panic start to seize in her chest. She heads for the door, hugging her arms to herself and trying not to flinch, certain that every phantom brush of air is the spider on her skin._

_Harry isn't following her. "I have to, I have to, he's gonna be so mad." _

_"You don't even know what kind of – "_

_"I think I see it!" Harry dives down with the tube clutched in his hand, and MJ stops in her tracks when she hears something smash. _

_She runs back and sees Harry on the floor, blood gleaming from a cut on his hand. "Are you okay?" she asks, skidding to he knees to look at it. _

_"I'm – I'm fine, but I – I don't know where it – "_

_MJ feels a sharp, distinct pinch on her ankle. She doesn't scream. She has a grave understanding of what has happened before she even manages to crane her head, before she even sees the spider crawl off of her leg and stagger back onto the floor, scurrying back into the darkness. _

_She looks back at Harry and his mouth is wide open in horror. He saw it too. _

_"It bit me," she says faintly, pulling her leg into her chest. There is a red angry mark on her ankle, throbbing dully, radiating out from under her skin. "It bit me." _

_Harry grabs her hand. It's so clammy with sweat that it almost slides right off of her. _

_"C'mon," he wheezes, pulling her roughly back up to her feet. "Let's get out of here." _

((()))

MJ wakes up with Blake peering over her bed, and immediately screams.

"Ah! Sorry! Shit," says Blake, backing up to the other side of the room.

"What the _fuck,_" MJ exclaims, already embarrassed knowing that the entire hall probably just heard her.

Blake is unrepentant. "You were talking in your sleep. Loudly. In the middle of the day, might I add," she says, somewhat judgmentally.

MJ clutches her hands to her shoulders, shivering despite the sweltering heat and the lack of air conditioning. She hasn't had a dream like that in at least a week, and this one was the most vivid and disturbing by far. What's more unsettling is how the dreams all seem to piece together, that if she sorts them out she can create an almost seamless timeline for them.

Until the past few weeks she has hardly ever remembered her dreams. Now she is remembering them with such startling clarity that she can still feel Harry's sweaty palm on hers, can still hear the hum of that dark lab, can still taste her own fear, acidic on her tongue.

"You sick or something?" asks Blake.

MJ shakes her head. None of it is real. She's going through a weird adjustment right now, so it makes sense, however unpleasant the result is.

"Well, I'm headed to the dining hall, if you want to join," Blake offers.

She swings her legs back over the mattress and glances at the clock. It's almost one – perfect. Second week of school and she has already missed a class.

"Yeah," says MJ, scooping up the phone that she has diligently kept charged despite the fact that nobody ever calls. She is in no position to be refusing friendships. At least Blake's is somewhat built-in.

She jams her feet into her shoes, her legs already aching from this morning's sprint with Peter. She wonders what he would think about the dreams. It would be a silly thing to mention to him anyway, and she remembers clearly the warning that Harry sent in the one letter she received from him, asking her not to mention that they were in touch.

She rubs the spot on her ankle where the spider bit her in the dream. The skin is smooth and unblemished as it has ever been.

"You coming?"

MJ stands back up and grabs her student ID, following Blake out the door and shutting the weird dreams in the room behind her as she goes.

((()))

The rest of the week passes by uneventfully. A few people on her floor are pulled out to interview about the kid who was beaten up on the third floor, and MJ passes a few headlines with blurry pictures of the alleged "Black Cat." For the most part she keeps her head down and spends her days at the library or the computer lab, studying ahead of time so she doesn't have to do it when she's already exhausted from her weekend shifts.

She's exhausted by Friday night. On work nights she heads out around eight, always wearing sneakers and something casual, the rest of her admittedly racy dance ensemble and high heels tucked into her backpack. She doesn't mind the long walks. The further she gets from the campus the more relieved she starts to feel relieved, as if the MJ that she is at school is a strained and poor attempt to become someone else – because this is what she truly is. This is where she thrives, where she shines, where she most feels like herself.

Too bad there weren't college degrees in gyrating on stage in sequins.

Usually she arrives before all the other dancers. She takes her time with her make-up, spreading her supplies neatly in front of the mirror, even singing to herself. That might be the most annoying part of dorm living – She hasn't been able to sing privately for ages. There is something undeniably freeing about knowing she can belt out half the _Wicked_ soundtrack without worrying about somebody kicking the ceiling for her to stop.

She is the youngest of the dancers by far, but besides the occasional use of the nickname "Babyface" they don't treat her any differently. She is included in the gossip and the traditional shot of tequila they all take before they go on, and whenever they have plans to go out afterward she is always invited, even though every night so far she has gone straight home.

There is only one element she has been excluded from, and she doesn't mind one bit.

"Miss Watson?"

It's one of the members of the security team. She has a baby wipe poised in her hand, ready to rub all the make-up and sweat.

"Not Babyface. She's eighteen," says Nora, one of the older dancers. She hoists a leg up over MJ's chair as if to shield her.

Every night the bouncers approach a few of the dancers after the show at the request of clients. MJ has heard that it's for private dancing behind closed doors, that it doesn't involve any contact between the dancers and the clients, but it's hard to know for sure. Especially when so far they have forbidden any clients from requesting her so far.

"He said he'll keep it open doors," says the security guard. "He only wants to talk."

MJ purses her lips. It's always the types that _just want to talk_ that turn out to be trouble.

"Don't go," says Nora.

"Wait," says Toni. She looks at the security guard with a scrutinizing expression. "Did he say how much he was offering?"

The security guard works his jaw impatiently. "He isn't offering anything. Says he knows her. That she'll want to meet with him."

"Who is he?" MJ asks, her interest piqued.

"He didn't say. You're free to say no, but you have to tell me whether or not you're coming."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," says MJ, only because her curiosity has gotten the better of her.

Nora unlatches her leg from MJ's dresser to let her pass. "Be careful." She looks over at the guard and emphasizes, "Door. Stays. Open."

MJ casts her a grateful look, and follows the guard out, shoving her feet back into her heels as she goes. She doesn't know anybody who could afford a place like this. Sure, she knew plenty of guys in high school, some of them more … intimately than others. But this club is way too upscale for any of their ilk, and they are pretty strict about over twenty-one only at the door.

Which leaves pretty much nobody, barring her father.

She is fearing the worst as the security guard leads her down the winding hallways of the backstage area and out toward the front. She is whisked past the lingerers at the bar, the few guests that are still milling out, before any of them can so much as get a glimpse of her.

Only once before has she ever been in one of the private rooms, back when she was getting her first tour of the place after she got hired. She remembers lush velvet curtains and expansive couches, and a tiny elevated platform that served as a stage. Everything in the room smelled expensive, from the thick carpets to the dark wood of the walls.

She steels herself as the door opens this time, weeks later, and the security guard draws the curtain back.

He is sitting on the couch, waiting for her. She is surprised by his obvious youth.

"MJ," he says, and at once her hand flies to her mouth. She is mortified not to have recognized him on sight.

The young man in the crisp suit, sitting with his leg crossed on the couch waiting for her – is _Harry_.

((()))

Thank you for all your well wishes on the internship! I am happy to report that I survived the first week only humiliating myself like one or seven times. I did not, however, survive seeing _The Fault in Our Stars_ in theaters, and in the event that the nerves that make emotions in my brain ever fix themselves, you all will be the first to know. Shout-out to anyone who took the SATs this weekend! In the meantime, go outside! Chase some fireflies! Drink some lemonade! SUMMER IS ON ITS WAY!


	8. Chapter 8

Birds of a Feather

Harry seems more like a phantom than a person. It occurs to her that she has seen him like this a thousand times – that she is unsurprised by the ease in his posture, the gleam in his eyes, the way he cuts the hair now. She even recognizes the suit he is wearing, or at least the style of it. She knows this person.

But those were only photographs. Magazines and blog posts of his travels and his escapades, stories that she happened to stumble on when she wasn't looking for him, stories that she found right away when she was.

He stands up to greet her just as the security guard falls back behind the curtain, leaving them alone.

The room is quiet, and for a moment he just stares at her. She wishes she were wearing anything besides this ridiculous, jingly costume, painfully aware of how much of herself is exposed to him, even more painfully aware of how desperate this must all look.

"Mary Jane," he mutters, in a voice she doesn't remember.

She can't speak. Her throat is too tight, and it feels like there is too much air collecting in her chest, threatening to burst out of her.

He smiles, just one side of his mouth, the way she remembers.

"MJ, you're all … grown up."

She can't help herself. She knows he is older now, that he's sophisticated and worldly and probably looks at people like her the way her father used to look at vegetables but she doesn't care. Before she even knows what she's doing she has crashed into him, throwing her arms around him, too happy to care about the consequences.

To her enormous relief he laughs, and immediately returns the embrace. She is almost weak with the relief of it, by the warmth and sincerity of his arms wrapped around her. She can't remember the last time she hugged somebody.

"I _missed_ you," she blurts. She pulls away from him. "I'm sorry – I just thought you were – you're sick, I shouldn't have – "

"MJ, MJ, it's fine," says Harry. He is all smiles and so at ease, and she is quaking like a leaf.

"You're okay?" she asks dizzily.

He shrugs one of his shoulders. "Some days are better than others." He looks up at her and smiles, shaking his head as if he can't quite believe his eyes. "This is a good day."

She grins back at him. She hasn't felt happiness like this in such full force in so long that she's afraid it's going to start leaking out of her.

"And you and Peter are …"

His smile flickers at Peter's name.

"No," he says, swiping at his chin with his hand. He glances down at the carpet. "We haven't worked things out yet."

"Oh."

She supposes she must have known this. Peter is her next door neighbor and she hardly ever sees him herself – she imagines it would be near impossible for Harry to track him down.

"Look, I – I know you and Peter must be close," says Harry, with a rueful, forgiving expression. He looks up at her searchingly, anticipating some sort of reaction. "I understand. You might be uncomfortable being around me. It's only natural to take sides – "

"Harry, no," MJ interrupts. She forgets to be casual, she forgets to be cool. All of the practiced nonchalance of her high school years falls off of her like someone took to it with a shredder, and she is standing here as her old, scrawny, blunt self, the way she was when she didn't care what anybody thought of her. "I would never – I'm not taking sides. We're all friends."

Harry takes a resigned breath. "I can't tell you how glad I am to hear that."

She shifts her weight uncomfortably between her feet, still pinched into her bedazzled heels. He is every bit as weary as Peter seems to her. His face is paler than she has ever remembered it, and although he isn't lacking in confidence there is something anxious in the way he works his jaw, the way he looks at her as if he is trying to earn her approval when she doesn't even think she is worthy of his.

"Besides," she says. "Peter and I aren't – we're not really even that close."

Harry's brows furrow. "You're not?"

Her smile feels wobbly. She doesn't want to disappoint him with the truth. A few weeks ago he was so adamant that she help him when he could not, and look at her. She is useless. Every time she has reached out to him she has only succeeded in pushing him further away.

"I'm trying," she says. That much she can honestly tell him.

She thinks he might try to make her explain, but he doesn't. "I don't want to talk about Peter," he says. "I want to talk about you."

"Me?" MJ hates the little laugh that tapers out of her, breathy and unsure.

He lowers his chin and it occurs to her that his eyes are level with hers now. She used to be taller than him. God, she used to make fun of him for it all the time.

"You didn't take the scholarship money."

Now that she's actually here and seeing him face-to-face all of her weird feelings about the scholarship money seem flimsy and paranoid. She opens her mouth to explain but she can't see how she can without insulting him. How could she ever think for a second he had any ill intentions with that money? It's Harry.

"No," she admits. "I didn't."

"Why?"

The question is light, as if he is genuinely curious. There is no defensiveness in his voice when he asks her.

She tucks her arms into her chest, making herself feel small. "I didn't earn it," she says. "I couldn't take it."

Harry shakes his head. "I don't believe that. You've always worked so hard, MJ, and besides – you could be focusing so much more on school. You don't need – _this_," he says, gesturing at the room and all of its gaudy splendor, thankfully not at her or her equally outlandish getup.

She surprises herself with her answer. "No, I like it here," she tells him, and she realizes that, however unfortunate, it's the truth. The other dancers here are more her friends than anybody she's met in the first few weeks at Empire State. And the dancing, however bizarre, is so much more freeing than her classes. The dance classes she takes at school are so regimented, so uniform, that she feels like there isn't any room for personal expression – here she can be as wild as she wants.

Tonight in particular she felt like the hours on the stage were over just as soon as they begun. For the first time she realizes that he must have been here tonight, waiting for her. He must have seen.

She is both embarrassed and thrilled at the prospect of it. It isn't often that anybody she knows actually sees her dance. And there's a part of her that wants Harry to be impressed with her, even though she knows she is a speck on the food chain compared to him.

"You're happy?" he asks.

She is momentarily disarmed by the question. It's so simple that she almost lies, and yet so deeply personal that she can't. At least not to Harry.

She lifts her eyes back up at him. "Some days are better than others."

He offers her the barest of smirks and she is struck by how much she has missed this, by how much this used to mean to her. Over the past few years she has burned so many bridges. She is grateful to see that one of them seems to have survived.

"How are you getting home?" Harry asks.

She gestures vaguely toward the front. "I walk. It's not that far."

"I'll walk you," he says. It's kind of charming, the way he hesitates. "If you don't mind, that is."

"No," she says. There is a strange and inexplicable lightness in her stomach, fluttering in her chest. "Let me go change, I'll be right back."

She doesn't want to keep him waiting. Once she gets in the dressing room she throws off the costume carelessly and jams her limbs back into her jeans and her ratty t-shirt, racing out without checking the mirror. She doesn't need a glimpse to remind her of how disparately absurd she looks standing next to someone like Harry.

He's waiting for her in the lobby when she stumbles out, standing patiently with his hands clasped together.

"There's the MJ I remember."

She rolls her eyes, feeling some part of herself deflate. The act is over. "Ha," she deadpans, looking down at her sneakers, all scuffed and grayed where the white rubber used to be.

"Hey," he says. He waits until she looks up at him and then he says, "I missed you too."

((()))

The night is balmy and quiet, unlike the New York she is used to. They take their time walking – at first she feels uncharacteristically shy, like she is meeting him for the first time, but just like with Peter it isn't long until they start falling into the familiar rhythms of the old days.

It's just that unlike Peter, there is no weird history to navigate through. When Harry left it was a clean cut, everything severed neatly all at once – with Peter the drift apart was slow and excruciating and hard to even explain. She doesn't have to justify herself to Harry. She doesn't have to feel ashamed or uncomfortable or guilty. It's like picking up an old favorite book – it doesn't matter where she starts, because she can't even remember where she left off.

He tells her about his misadventures in boarding school, and some of his wilder days traveling in Europe. It all sounds so glamorous and unreal. It is hard to reconcile the Harry that she knew, all shaggy-haired and skinny-limbed, with this Harry who is so worldly and edgy and – well, _cool_.

She is in a fit of laughter hearing about the time he got stranded on the top of a fancy hotel in Amsterdam buck-naked when he says, "That's enough about me, tell me about you."

MJ laughs harder. "There's nothing to tell."

"Aw, come on. I know that's not true."

She sucks in a breath in an effort to calm the spasms in her from laughing, then hums the breath back out indecisively. "No, really, I'm boring," she says. "I've just been here. In New York. If you saw my transcripts then you saw everything."

"Not everything."

It suddenly feels too quiet, like the echo of their voices is going to bounce all the way up into strangers' apartments. She doesn't want to talk about her father. She can't even think about him without tasting the anger, still so acrid and fresh at the base of her throat. As for the rest of it – the drinking, the cheer team, the nights wasted fooling around with boys whose parents were out of town – it all seems more pathetic than usual. She may have changed a lot since she and Harry were kids, but after that change she was stagnant. Stuck. Unoriginal.

"I tried to get in touch with you," she says.

Harry nods. "I know. And believe me, MJ, if I'd gotten any of those letters –"

"No, no, I mean – after your father died. I tried to get in touch with you."

"Oh." He smiles a little ruefully, and is quiet for a few steps. She's afraid that she has upset him, but when she hazards another glance in his direction his eyes are thoughtful. "I'm glad you didn't, then. I wasn't myself."

"Of course not. Your father – I'm so sorry."

"I'm not."

MJ can't help her eyes from flashing up at him, can't help the way every muscle in her face is tight with surprise. "What?"

Only now is the image of the new Harry starting to fracture. His gait is suddenly abrupt, his eyes cold. "He was an asshole," says Harry, and she is almost horrified by the ease the words fall out of him.

When they were younger Harry worshipped the ground his father walked on. She can't imagine what he could have done to make Harry hate him even in death.

"And he left behind a hell of an inheritance," says Harry, and then he rolls up the sleeve to his suit.

MJ gasps. She knew he was sick. He told her he was sick. He even told her that the effect of it was shocking. But reading about it in a letter did nothing to prepare her for seeing the sickly green sores that puncture up and down the skin of his forearm, cratered and scabbed.

"Oh my god. _Harry_."

"It's okay," he says gruffly, pulling the sleeve back down. He glances up and down the street, but they're still alone. "I mean, it's not. But it's been worse. I'm just thankful I can be outside again."

The image of it is burned into her eyelids. She has never seen anything like it in her entire life.

"But there's a cure," she says, and she realizes that she is struggling to keep up with him, that in her shock she almost stopped walking completely. "Right? You're going to find a cure?"

Harry looks at her solemnly, and that's all the answer she needs.

It takes MJ a few moments to collect herself. The realization is cold and dreadful, like some phantom wind has passed through her and chilled every bone in her body.

"You're going to die," she says lowly.

Harry kicks his loafer at some invisible object on the cement. "We're all going to die, MJ. One way or another."

"Don't," she says. The word sounds guttural, her throat clamping. "Don't do that."

His eyes are kinder when he looks back up at her. "I'm not going down without a fight."

They're a block away from the dorms when Harry suddenly stops walking. She looks around, trying to find some reason for it, but when she looks back over at him his hands are in his pockets and his feet are shifting uneasily.

"This is as far as I go," he says.

She doesn't ask him how he knows where the dorm is. "Why?"

Harry takes a breath and casts his gaze out toward the street, where there are several lonely taxis approaching in the distance and not much else. "The thing about – time. And knowing that I don't have a lot of it. I want to make it count," says Harry. The glow of the streetlamp casts a sickly light on his skin, revealing the purple of the skin under his eyes, the weariness lined into his forehead. "But more than that, I want to make amends."

"Come with me, then," says MJ. She is so naïve in her resolve that she forgets it's well past two in the morning. "Or tomorrow." Harry starts to shake his head, so she insists: "Harry, whatever happened between you and Peter, I'm sure if you just apologized – "

"An apology isn't going to cut it this time."

She stands on the edge of the sidewalk with him, her arms tucked into her chest. She thinks that if she doesn't say anything for long enough that she will wear him down, and whatever the matter is will tumble out of him the way she knows it would if she were the one in his place.

"Then what will?" she asks, even though she is afraid of the answer.

Harry's lips form a thin, determined line. "You knew Gwen."

It strikes her in an unexpected place, to hear Gwen's name out loud. Nobody has actually said it out loud since the funeral. It summons an ache in her that she has been trying to ignore – how can she even spend a second preoccupied with her own grief when Peter's is eating him alive?

"In high school. Yeah," she says, as if that was all a long time ago. It suddenly feels like it was.

"She was one of our most promising researchers. Remarkable. Kind. I met her once," says Harry. There is an edge in his bitterness that she didn't know he was capable of when he says, "You know it's Spider-Man's fault. What happened to her."

MJ stands very still, trying to decide how to react as the blood rushes between her ears. She knows what Harry wants to hear. He wants her to agree with him, to share whatever anger is lurking in the depths of his eyes.

But there is some childish, pathetic part of her that still has an impossible faith in the idea of heroes. It wasn't very long ago she was awestruck, reading every blog update, wasting her hard-earned money on stupid paraphernalia, holding this secret and almost selfish belief that she, personally, was safe in this city, because Spider-Man was around.

She spent so many years believing in nothing, but she _believed_. She believed in him.

"Whatever happened up there," says MJ, "I'm sure he didn't mean to—"

"No. It was his fault. He killed her."

She doesn't want to fight with him. But she isn't going to lie to make him feel better, either. "Harry …"

"I'm going to fix this. This thing between me and Peter." He nods just once, more to himself than to her, and takes a resolute breath. "I'm going to stop Spider-Man."

((()))

MJ walks the last block to the dorm alone, feeling a disconnect between her brain and her body, moving her limbs as if someone else is compelling her forward. She steps up the stairs that lead into the building and turns around to stare out into the street.

Nobody has seen Spider-Man in months. Not since what happened to Gwen.

She can't believe in a world where Gwen's death wasn't an accident, where Spider-Man didn't do everything he could to prevent it – why else would he be hiding all this time? Harry insisted it was because he was a criminal, but MJ knows the truth, knows it like it's her own: he is guilty. He is beside himself.

Harry didn't elaborate any further. MJ feels the anxiety creeping into her skin, crawling all over her – she feels so torn. She just got Harry back. Harry, who she has known as long as a person can know someone.

So why does every nerve in her body want to find some way to betray him – to warn Spider-Man?

The door opens behind her while she's still standing on the outside of it, staring out into the street. She glances behind her and startles at the sight of Peter.

"What're you – where are you going?" she asks, already checking him, scanning his face and his bearing, expecting the worst.

Peter is scowling. "You've been standing out here. I could see you from the window."

His eyes are lingering in oddly specific places on her face, and she casts her gaze down at once, realizing that she is still in full make-up – glittering eye shadow and all. It feels as though whatever magical spell the club cast on her is broken, and here she is, unglamorous, just a plain looking girl making a fool of herself, standing stupidly on the sidewalk.

"I was just coming in," she mumbles.

He doesn't move aside. She finds herself staring straight into one of his shoulders – he's in a thin sleeveless shirt, all mussed from sleep, the bare skin of his arm exposed and revealing surprisingly muscular biceps. She blinks away from it, embarrassed to have lingered.

"Where have you been?" Peter asks.

She can't swallow back the lump of guilt. Of course she can't tell him she saw Harry, and of course neither of them mean Peter any harm by keeping him in the dark. But that doesn't make her feel any less bad about it.

"Dancing," she says. That part isn't a lie. She tugs uncomfortably at the belt loop of her jeans.

For a few moments he doesn't speak. The way he is looking at her, the concern and the complete incomprehension, makes her feel like she is under a magnifying glass.

"What ever happened to you, MJ?" he asks hoarsely.

It feels like he slid a knife between her ribs. Her cheeks well up and threaten to spill over so suddenly that she doesn't have the time or the wits to hide it.

How many years has she waited for someone to ask her that? How many nights did she stumble home drunk, with her flimsy dresses, her scraped up knees, her scuffed up boots, and wondered why nobody cared? How many times did she stay out all night, longer even – just to see if anybody noticed she was gone?

MJ passed in and out of high school like a ghost, a hopeless case, a cautionary tale. She spent the last few months steeling herself, vowing not to derail herself again. Fine. Nobody cared. She wasn't going to prove anything to anyone by punishing herself for it.

So she pushed forward. She's here, isn't she? Getting an education. Trying to make something of her life.

She accepted her invisibility a long time ago. She is not prepared for the misery of someone actually seeing her after all this time.

Peter takes the smallest of steps toward her, and it is permission she didn't even know she needed until her head is pressed up against his chest and her eyes are crinkling shut, breathing him in, the old detergent his aunt uses and the distinct and comforting smell of Peter.

Neither of them moves. They stand there like statues with their arms at their sides, pressed against each other, the shared sadness of their grief and all the lost years binding them.

She doesn't know how much time passes and she doesn't care. For once she does not feel undeserved of comforting. She feels him breathing against her forehead and the tip of her nose, in and out, shaky and shallow. He needs this as much as she does.

Eventually a siren blares in the distance and jolts them both out of their trance. When she looks up at him, his cheeks are stained with tears, but his eyes are dry. He wipes at his face self-consciously.

"It's okay," she says. She immediately wishes she hadn't – she means that it's okay to cry in front of her. In the general scheme of things, nothing is okay.

But he seems to understand this, and stops trying to hide it, taking a ragged, soggy breath. His eyes are bright and demanding in the darkness.

"Uncle Ben. _Gwen_," he says, trying to keep his face composed, choking out her name like it is poisoning him. "Does it ever get better?" he asks. "Does it ever … "

Her mother has been dead for over a decade now. MJ knows that's why he is asking her, of all people.

She wishes she could tell him that it does. She wishes she could tell him that she doesn't think of her mother every day; that eventually the tears stopped and she hardened into some stronger, more grown-up version of herself. She wishes she could tell him that she doesn't lay awake at night wondering if she had just been _better_ if her mother might have stayed.

She can't lie to Peter any better than he can lie to her.

"I don't know," she says.

It's as close to the truth as she dares.

((()))

Gather round, ye all fanfiction readers, because it's Misadventures of a DC Intern Story Time. Yesterday I was minding my own business moseying down to the Metro when the woman next to me starts pointing SCREAMING at the top of her lungs that someone stole her phone - and sure enough, the scrawny culprit is RUNNING LIKE THE DEVIL down the block and across the street, so fast that nobody can even attempt to keep up.

Okay so picture ten people on a street corner (yours truly included) joining in her screaming, because even though we can't reach the guy maybe someone who hears us can stop him. One guy tries to grab him, an old woman smacks him with her umbrella, but he still keeps running and all but disappears. We are all very disappointed. My faith in humanity is also gone forever. And then.

And THEN. High above the crowd down the block, all of a sudden the thief is flying, lifted straight up above them all - this big burly guy caught him and carried him like a fucking duffel bag and carted him back up the block, walked up to the girl, and said to the thief, "GIVE IT BACK."

We all erupted into cheers. Life went on. (I left before the cops collected him.) The moral of the story, dear readers, is hold on tight to your cell phones. Also if your cell phone is going to get stolen make sure there is a bodybuilder down the block to catch whoever did it.

Okay. It's one in the morning. I love you all and your reviews crack me up. To the two of you who were joking about my grocery list, I have this answer: cheese, cheese, and more cheese. Possibly bread to put on the cheese. But mostly cheese. ;)


	9. Chapter 9

Birds of a Feather

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"I'm just – was that your – I didn't mean to – "

"Peter, seriously, it's _fine_."

There is a bead of sweat collecting on his forehead. The way his brows are furrowed he looks physically pained.

"I'm sorry – "

"Pete!" MJ hisses, as Felicia starts doing another walk around the room, surveying all of the different couples who have partnered up for today's self-defense exercises. "Stop apologizing."

"I'm pretty sure I just touched your – your … "

She reaches out her open palm and plants it squarely on Peter's chest. His eyes widen in confusion.

"There," she says. "Now I've touched _your_ boob. We're even."

He stares down at her hand, and then back up at her. His expression is solemn, his eyes fixed on hers sternly.

"How dare you," he deadpans.

She is so thrown off by his reaction that she doesn't just laugh, she bursts out an unsightly croak and ends up spitting on Peter in the process, which wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't half on top of him, pinning his arms to the floor for the sake of one of Felicia's exhaustive escape scenarios.

To his credit he doesn't cringe. He seems gratified by the laugh, even smirking a bit. It's been two months now since the beginning of the semester, and every now and then she sees this Peter, this glimmer of the boy she once knew.

She knows it won't last long, so she enjoys it while she can.

"Miss Watson. Mr. Parker." Felicia's voice is crisp and impatient above them. "Whatever the two of you do in your spare time is none of our business, but when you are in this class you will behave appropriately. Understood?"

MJ is unsure if the question is rhetorical. She can't see Felicia's face from here, her eyes still locked on Peter, who looks like he is holding his breath in an attempt not to laugh. After a few moments she hears the click of Felicia's footfalls as she moves on to the other side of the room to check someone else's progress.

"Okay, okay," says MJ, trying to sound businesslike. Peter is reddening underneath her. "Just uh, if you hike your leg up that way, and then – "

"This feels wrong."

"What?" asks MJ, immediately self-conscious. Mercifully she's wearing a t-shirt that is covering up all the parts of her that are a few unfortunate inches from his face, but at the very least she wished she'd had the forethought of a breath mint.

Peter wrinkles his nose. "I'm not going to attack you."

"You're _not _attacking me. You're defending yourself. _I'm _attacking – "

"But that's just it, if you attacked me I wouldn't actually fight back."

"I'm alarmed by how much you've thought this through."

"Besides, kicking you in the crotch wouldn't exactly – "

"Peter, I can fully guarantee that if you kicked me in the crotch, regardless of whatever parts are down there, I would be _fairly _incapacitated."

"Whatever parts are down there?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

She glares down at him. "If you're not careful maybe I _will_ attack," she says, pressing more of her weight against his arms to emphasize her point.

He lets out a lazy, nonchalant hum of acknowledgement and says, "I'm shaking."

They usually stop to get coffee now after class, since she has an hour to kill before interpretive movement and self defense is the only class Peter has on Mondays. At first asking him to come with her felt like pulling teeth. He murmured vague excuses about needing to be this place or the other, and for the first few weeks she ended up standing on a street corner while he ambled away, singular in his pain, having spent about as much time in the real world as he could manage. On worse days he wouldn't even come to class at all.

It was seeing Harry, really, that made her push through the embarrassment and keep asking. She hated that gnawing, incapable feeling when he was asking about Peter, and she couldn't even say that they'd held a civil conversation to date.

So every week she asked him if he wanted to grab a cup of coffee with her. Every week, the same exact words, the same exact inflection, the same exact casual shrug.

The first week he said no. The second week he said no. The third week he said no. The fourth week he said maybe, but then ultimately still said no.

The fifth week he said no – and then ended up following her around the corner, engrossed in a conversation about the girl who acrylic nails broke off in the middle of class and sent Felicia in a rage about how feminine beauty should empower women instead of hindering them. MJ could still practically hear the echo of her ranting fifteen minutes after it happened.

He ended up standing in line with her long enough that he got himself a cup too, and then lingered there with her a few minutes. The week after that he not only followed, but sat down. And the week after that she didn't even have to ask – he just followed her around the corner and sat with her and that was that.

Now the rhythm is familiar enough that neither of them really acknowledges it. Her Mondays now involve an hour and a half of weird and vaguely inappropriate touching with Peter Parker followed by cordial coffee time.

She isn't expecting it to be so inconsequential, all of the hands-on contact she has with Peter. Even in theater or dance when she has to work intimately with a boy there is the inevitable awkwardness, the nervous giggling, the sexual tension on both sides – or, worse, just one of them (and MJ has, unfortunately, been on both sides of that coin).

But with Peter it is easy. She trusts him. He trusts her. There must be some innate part of their childhood, of growing up together, that somehow makes them more comfortable with each other than anyone else in the class is.

That being said, there is one element of self-defense that caught MJ off guard: Peter is ripped.

And _strong_. Like, she is fully aware that he is using the smallest percentage of his strength and somehow can move her entire body with ease. When everybody else is winded Peter is just standing casually and rocking back on his heels waiting for the next set of exercises to start up.

MJ would be lying if she didn't say there was a little part of her that likes it. She doesn't think of Peter as anything more than what he's always been – a friend – but she is happy for him in a weird way, remembering the kids who used to jostle him around in junior high. Plus even though she and Peter are the farthest thing from a couple that two people can get, there is a smug part of her that enjoys the palpable jealousy from the other girls in the room when Peter chooses MJ as his partner time and time again.

"How did your audition go?"

MJ purses her lips as if she has tasted something sour. "Eh," she says, spotting two seats next to each other at one of the communal tables in the bag. She slings her bag over them before someone can claim them.

Peter presses his nose to the brim of his coffee cup. "Dare I ask?"

"Spare me the PTSD," she says, dipping her finger into the coffee and tasting it, a less-than-polite habit she has had since childhood.

Peter lifts brows and says, "That bad?"

She shrugs. Today is a good day. As opposed to the bad ones, when Peter doesn't talk much at all, or the worse ones, when he is completely and miserably silent. She never knows which Peter she is going to get – so she soaks up every minute of _this_ Peter that she can, all the while feeling like she is walking on eggshells, just waiting for something to trigger him again. Some fleeting look, or a casually uttered word, or the laugh of a stranger. And Peter's shoulders will sink into himself and his eyes will cast downward and she knows it will be hours until she can reach him again, hours at the very least.

But he is still in school. That is something. She feels partially responsible for keeping him here, for holding him accountable. She is capable of that much.

"You going out tonight?" Peter asks.

Every now and then he does this. He poses the question offhandedly, but there is always some edge in his tone, some implication she isn't fond of.

She still hasn't told him about her job. She doesn't know why – she isn't ashamed of it. Or at least she wasn't when Harry found it.

It's different with Peter, though. Peter is so … _good_. Wholesome. Moral.

"Nope. It's a Monday," she says.

Peter doesn't say anything back, but he doesn't have to. She breathes in the silence, sips from her coffee, stares out the window.

Outside there are two little boys on the sidewalk, passing a piece of pizza back and forth, taking turns biting into it. A smile curls on MJ's face.

"Remember when we used to do that?" she asks.

Peter follows her eyes over to the boys.

"The three of us," she muses. The boys outside the window are chewing with their mouths open shamelessly. "Harry always took the biggest – "

MJ hears the distinct sound of something snapping, and when she looks down she sees that the handle to Peter's ceramic mug has come clean off. Not only that, but it's shattered into little pieces, his open palm bleeding from the shards.

It's noisy enough that nobody else even notices, but MJ stares down at his hand in horror.

"Are you – " She doesn't even know what to make of it. That shouldn't be physically possible. "Are you okay?"

He won't look at her. He brushes the shards off his palm, onto the table, and stands up abruptly.

"Here," she says, getting up to follow him. "I'll get some napkins. You should go wash off your – "

When she turns around, Peter is gone. She glances around the room for him and then she hears the sound of the bell clanging on the door, and sees that Peter is walking through it, out into the street. She catches just the briefest of glances on his face, but it is enough to shock her, to make her feel as if someone has pressed ice against her heart.

His expression is wretched.

It occurs to her that she has never seen him angry before, at least not like this. The effect of it is terrifying. He walks quickly, and there is some unknowable power in his stride, as if he is capable of more than she could ever imagine.

He's gone in an instant, and MJ is too rattled to chase him, too stunned to try. She stares back down at the ceramic shards in a pile on the table, hearing her heart thrum painfully between her ears, in the palms of her hands, the tender parts of her feet.

She hasn't seen Harry since he met her at the club. He has been communicating with her over e-mail, telling her that he isn't fit to be seen, and she has respected that.

Until now. Until the mere _mention_ of Harry's name was enough to send Peter spiraling headfirst into the dark place she has been struggling to pull him from for months. Whatever happened between them, Harry was right – it won't be fixed with just an apology. Judging by the look on Peter's face, she doubts it ever will.

((()))

The dreams have persisted, but the night after Peter leaves MJ in that café she has the worst one yet.

There is a visible pattern now in the dreams – she has all kinds of them, none of them memories, but so close to her heart that they feel like they are. In the dreams she is always thirteen, and she is always wearing shorts and sneakers; she can practically feel the itch of the training bra she finally had to beg her father to buy after several months of ignorance.

Peter and Harry are in most of them, if not all of them. Sometimes it's hard to remember when she wakes up.

But more often than any of the dreams is the one she has in the Osborn mansion: over and over again she finds herself there, wandering the halls with Harry, staring at the spiders. Sometimes the timeline of it jumps and skips, sometimes her perspective of the scene changes as if she is watching from far away instead of her own body, but always, always, always, the dream stops right after the spider bites her.

That night is different.

That night she dreams of pain. Bright, intense, shades of green – piercing and unfathomable pain, unlike anything she has ever experienced. There is no logic in the dream, only soundless, profound misery, so intense and so real that she doesn't understand that it isn't real until she is shooting up in bed, gasping, her lungs ripping with effort as if she has been drowning.

She clutches to herself, trying to even her breathing, quaking uncontrollably. Blake snores on the other side of the room and MJ is suddenly pathetically grateful for her existence, grateful that there is another person in the room, somehow grounding her back into reality.

She opens her laptop and types out a message to Harry: _I have to see you. _

Outside the wind howls against the screen of the window. MJ slams the clunky laptop shut and sets it back on the floor, burrowing back into her covers, sinking her head back onto the pillow. She is afraid to sleep, afraid to dream, but too exhausted to resist. She falls back into an unsteady slumber, and mercifully doesn't dream for the rest of the night.

((()))

There is a reply in her inbox from Harry the next morning. He agrees to meet her Thursday, but there is a stipulation: he will only come out at night. He tells her he will be waiting outside of the club for her in a black town car.

Three days pass, and MJ doesn't see Peter once – not in the stairwell, not on his way to the showers, not in the mornings when he should be leaving for class or the afternoons when he should be coming back. She knows he is around. The walls are paper thin and she can hear almost verbatim any conversations Peter has with his roommate.

On Thursday morning she listens to them have an entire conversation about the Yankees and that's when she decides her patience for Peter is thoroughly gone. He has been avoiding her all week, no doubt about it. And for what? Because she mentioned Harry's _name?_

Maybe he is embarrassed about the way he reacted and doesn't want to face her. But he should know by now that she is not that easily pushed away. Hasn't she proved it time and time again? Hasn't she endured weeks of him brushing her off, or forgetting about her entirely, only to let him act as if nothing has happened every time he decides he is ready to come back?

He doesn't have to avoid her anymore. She'll make it easy for him. Even when she hears the door to his room open that morning she doesn't make any attempt to leave hers and orchestrate a run-in.

Ten hours later she is sitting flushed and exhausted in her boss's spacious office in the back of the club, her face freshly scrubbed and her costume shed. She eases herself into her knit sweater and blinks across the desk at the woman, who is fidgeting with uncharacteristic discomfort.

The room feels suddenly too warm. The dance floor and the club is kept so well air-conditioned that MJ isn't used to this kind of stuffiness.

"MJ, I'm so sorry."

Her eyes snap up at these words, and her stomach sinks into the chair, bleeds into the carpet. "Why?" she asks, even though she knows.

Her boss purses her lips as if this is all very painful for her. "I have a friend in Pennsylvania, who's opening a club like this, and she'd love to – "

"Wait. Wait a minute," says MJ, interrupting her, and her boss is cowed so quickly into silence that it almost isn't worth it to clarify. "You're firing me?" she asks, and she is suddenly afraid that her voice will echo through the air vents, that her humiliation will be broadcast through the halls.

Her boss shuts her eyes wearily, presses a hand to her forehead. Poor dear, thinks MJ. This must be so hard for _her_.

"We're letting you go."

"We," MJ echoes, because there is no collective "we," just her boss, who apparently doesn't want her here anymore.

"I'd keep you if I could," she says.

MJ can tell she doesn't mean it. The embarrassment stings so terribly that she wants to curl up into herself, wants to make herself invisible. She wants to know what she did wrong, what she should fix, but she is too mortified to ask; she is thinking of every night she has spent here and wondering if it was that glaringly obvious to everyone else, that she wasn't as experienced, wasn't as pretty, wasn't as sexy or curvy or confident as all the other dancers.

"But my friend in Pennsylvania – "

"I have school _here_," says MJ, her throat thick. She is not going to let this woman absolve herself of the guilt of what she is doing.

MJ takes a deep breath, too deep, filling her lungs with enough air to make her dizzy. She uses this money to pay tuition, to pay for housing, to pay for food. Without a job that pays as much as this one there is no way in hell she'll be able to keep up.

"It doesn't have to be today. You can stay through the weekend. Say goodbye to everybody."

"No," says MJ, almost instantly. She cannot bear the thought of their pity, or the idea that any of them saw this coming before she did, especially when she feels blindsided. She grapples for her bag and clumsily picks it up from the floor and lifts herself up from the chair. "No, thank you." Her pride is not worth whatever money she could earn the rest of this weekend.

Her footsteps feel impossibly loud and graceless as she gets up and walks to the door, which now seems twice the distance from the desk as it was when MJ was first summoned into the office.

She doesn't mean to be mouthy. She really has been trying not to be, because it's only ever gotten her into trouble. So she makes sure that her voice is even when she says, "Can I ask why?"

"MJ …"

"Just honestly, why? If it's money, then why me, and not one of the other girls? I deserve to know."

Her boss blows out an exasperated, helpless breath. She is hoping MJ will just walk away, just leave it be, and in her heart MJ knows she should.

"You're – in a few years, maybe, you'll be there. But right now …"

MJ turns around just before the first tear springs out her eye. "Alright. Okay. Thanks," she says, talking to the door that she is walking out of. She shuts it carefully and quietly behind her. She doesn't want to make a scene.

But her brain cannot communicate that with her body. She is trembling, leaking, feeling as though her insides have been flipped inside out and put on display for the world.

She is a dancer. That is all she is, all she has ever defined herself as – if she can't do this, then what _can_ she do?

As she heads toward the exit she's already trying to form some sort of escape plan, something to comfort herself – she'll change her major. She'll veer in another direction entirely, and major in something like, like anthropology, or English, or education. She will spend the next three and a half years quiet and miserable but she will be _safe_ from ever feeling this ugly, rotten, terrible feeling again.

But who is she kidding? Another tide of despair washes over her, and before she knows it she is blinded by the tears, her entire face burning with the shame. She isn't good at anything. She isn't good at school. And without this job, she can't afford it anyway.

She shoves the door open and spills out into the street, hiking her bag up on her shoulders, staring determinedly at the sidewalk. She will not be the girl crying on the curb. She will not be the cliché, the wash-up, the cautionary tale –

"Mary Jane?"

The sound of Harry's voice is paralyzing – she is past embarrassment. She is somewhere deeper, darker, so dissociated from it that she feels like if she closes her eyes she can somehow will herself away from this moment, from this boy she forgot was waiting for her tonight of _all nights_ and is now fully witnessing her in all of her shambles.

She tapers her steps and slows to a stop, her face still directed at the ground. She will collect herself. Deep breath. _Three. Two. One. _

"Harry," she says, and her smile feels like cracking concrete.

The concern in his eyes from the car window is so palpable that she thinks she can't possibly hold it together a moment longer.

"I'm sorry," she stammers, "I'm – I forgot that you – "

"Get in," says Harry firmly, opening the car door for her.

She obeys. It's a relief to sink into the dark of the town car, into the cushy padded seats. She takes another breath and sucks back the tears, wills the sadness away, because she needs to talk to Harry. She asked him here for a reason.

But suddenly the fragile construction of her flimsy little world is crumbling, and she can't quite remember what the reason is.

"How are you?" she asks, trying to sound normal, trying to sound _sane_, but it comes out garbled and miserable. She's an awful actress. Look at her. She can't even keep it together for a second.

"Hey," he says. There is something so gentle and lulling in the way he says it, the way he shifts his body closer and presses the warmth of his shoulder against hers. "Hey. What's going on?"

She shakes her head.

"Mary Jane," he says lowly, knowingly.

She doesn't deserve this. His pity, his sympathy. Harry is _dying_ and Peter is shell of himself and here she is crying because – because of _what?_ Because she's broke, because she isn't pretty enough, because she is bad at dancing. Boo fuckity hoo. She hates herself for this, for being so pathetic, for feeling this crushing and inescapable angst over things that are not the end of her world, things that she is capable of rising above, when her life could be so much worse.

Harry's thumb is rough but gentle on her cheek, brushing away a tear. She sucks in a little breath and looks at him in surprise.

In that moment, in that quiet in the backseat of the car, she feels like she can tell him anything. His eyes are fixated on hers and for the first time in months, maybe years, she feels like someone _sees _her.

For so long she has tried to be strong, to be independent, to pick herself up on her own every time she falls apart.

"They fired me," she whispers.

To her shock, the barest of smiles creases Harry's face. She sees his dark eyes gleaming in the dark.

"What?" she asks, her voice breaking. What could _possibly_ be funny about this?

"I'm just thinking," says Harry, leaning in, moving his hand under her chin and raising it to point her face up at him. "I'm just thinking how _stupid_ they're going to feel someday, when you hit the big time and they realize they were idiots to let you go."

For a moment she doesn't breathe. She is waiting for a punch line. When it doesn't come she laughs anyway, turning her head away from his touch, laughing a watery, dismal laugh. "That's not going to happen."

"Of course it will."

She shakes her head, staring out the tinted window, swallowing back another tide. "No," she says. "I'm – I'm done. I'm going to – major in something sensible, and smart, and – "

"No you're not," says Harry quietly.

She quivers in the seat next to him, but doesn't move. There is no point in contradicting him. She already knows what she has to do.

"This is a blip, MJ. This is something you're going to laugh about one day. And in the meantime – you'll bounce back from this. Take classes. Try twice as hard. Not because you can't do something else, because you could – you could be anything. But this is what you were born to do and you know it."

Never in her life has someone spoken to her like this. Never in her life has anyone believed in her so blindly, so faithfully. It's enough to splinter her heart.

"I saw you on that stage," Harry insists. His voice is closer to her now. When she turns to look at him his face is mere inches from hers, but unwavering, decisive. "Whatever it takes, you've got it. I couldn't take my eyes off of you."

They are so close that she can feel his breath on her face, can smell the familiar smell of him and something else entirely, something that stirs some deep, untapped longing in her. She forgets. She forgets it all – the mother who left, the father who might as well have, the loneliness and the desperation and the _rules_ she is supposed to follow, rules that she and Harry are not immune to, rules that right now, falling into his steady gaze, she cannot bear to think of.

The space between them is so full of intention that she thinks she must have it all wrong.

"Harry," she says softly, giving him an out.

Neither of them moves away. Some gentle, compelling magnetism pulls them closer, almost imperceptibly, until her skin is tingling and numb and the kiss isn't just anticipated, it's inevitable, as if she has waited for it all her life.

He responds instantly, reaching out to brace the back of her neck in his hands, tangling his fingers in her hair. She is almost too stunned to do anything else, completely lost in him, swallowed in this moment, this redemption, so overwhelmed by it that she can almost ignore the warning nipping somewhere in the back of her mind.

The kiss intensifies and she arches up to meet him, his hands working their way down to the small of her back, lowering her into the seat cushions until she is on her back, blinking up at him, breathing hard.

She has never done this before – not like this. Not with someone she loves. The feeling of it is more than she could have ever fathomed, and she knows in that moment, as he strokes the thin line of her collarbone and stares down at her so reverently, that she can never do this casually again. She will feel love, or she will feel nothing at all.

He lingers for a moment on the snap of her jeans and she responds by unbuttoning his shirt, clumsily, impatiently, and then they are one messy, beautiful tangle of limbs, shedding their clothes like too much armor.

"You are so beautiful," Harry murmurs into her neck.

She is glad it is too dark for him to see the one relieved, hopeful tear that rolls down her cheek.

* * *

I just want you all to know that this chapter was not only written by a sleep deprived person on a plane, it was written by a sleep deprived person on a plane who had to endure TWO SOLID FUCKING HOURS OF DRUNK FORMER A CAPPELLA KIDS BELTING SHOW TUNES IN THE SEAT BEHIND HER.

LIKE I GET IT WE ALL LOVE TO SING WHO DOESN'T LOVE TO SING AND I MYSELF WAS IN A CAPPELLA BACK IN THE DAY BUT IF I HEAR UNDER THE BOARDWALK ONE MORE TIME I WILL SERIOUSLY EAT MY OWN FACE.

My future arrest aside, I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful weekend.


	10. Chapter 10

Birds of a Feather

MJ doesn't get back to the dorm until eleven o'clock the next morning. She opens the door, feels an indescribable rush of relief to find her room empty, and then promptly flings herself fully-clothed on the mattress and falls asleep.

It is dreamless and unproductive. She wakes up with the same exhausting swarm of thoughts she cannot reconcile – her unabsorbed guilt and her undeniable desire and the solemn, pulsing knowledge deep in the marrow of her bones that last night she did something that changed _everything_.

She wakes up and the dorm is mostly empty – it's still the middle of the day. Hypnotically she rouses herself, finds her robe, pulls her hair out of its elastic.

She feels like an entirely different person. As she showers she looks down at her naked self and almost doesn't recognize her own stomach, her own legs and feet and hands – she rubs her neck, pushing the mop of wet hair back with her fingers, and it all feels so foreign, so unfamiliar.

For a long while she just stands there, letting the water pound on her back until it starts to grow cold. _What have I done?_

The thing is, she doesn't really regret it. And she could have. Easily. There were some crucial, sensitive, defining moments after it happened, that everything might have unraveled, that Harry might have looked at her shiftily, that she might have said all the wrong things. But they didn't.

She doesn't know how long she is in the shower for, but nobody comes into the bathroom to jar her out of her thoughts. Eventually she shuts the water off and scrubs herself dry, her skin pink from the heat. She tucks her hair up into the towel and slides her arms into her robe, wrapping it around herself, holding it tight.

The change in her is unmistakable when she looks at herself in the mirror. There is something about her cheeks, as if they are somehow more grown-up, not thinner or fatter, but nonetheless changed. Her eyes are a different kind of bright. Her lips are still plump and raw from the night before.

She likes herself like this.

It's been awhile since MJ has felt that way, longer than she can remember. She has always known she was pretty. Pretty made everything go down a little easier. But this – this is different. She feels worthy. She feels strong.

And it's because of Harry, of all people, of all circumstances. She would never have imagined the mutual comfort that they found in each other, and the togetherness they would share; after the first time that night he took her back to his apartment, with its expansive ceilings and its sharp-edged furniture and its equipment humming and glowing in the darkness.

The second time they made love was slower, more deliberate, but every bit as demanding. She wasn't crying that time. By then she had forgotten about everything except for him.

She pulls her hair out of the towel and runs her fingers through the wet strands, parting it down the side, letting in hang loose at her shoulders. She has always known Harry is … handsome. She knew there was a certain mischief about him, a certain draw, that all kinds of girls – from international supermodels to famous actresses and even, if the tabloids were correct, the princess of a small sovereign nation – flock to him.

But she never imagined she'd be one of them.

It wasn't like that, though. She is certain of it. Because for all of Harry's charm and charisma, it was something else entirely that attracted her to him, attracted them to each other. A shared history. A unique brokenness, a mutual abandonment, and very old and reliable childhood trust.

They stayed up the whole night talking. Trying to cram the last few years of their lives into the hours before the sun came up. The real stuff, this time. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

And between the two of them, there was a whole lot of ugly.

"You didn't come home last night."

MJ sucks in a breath through her nose, still clutching to her robe, her skin damp from the shower.

"Peter," she says, glancing on either side of them. He appeared out of nowhere.

His eyes are, as usual, sleepless. He is standing too close to her and doesn't seem to be even slightly aware of it.

"Where—where were you?"

She scowls, stricken with guilt, with the sinking and sudden memory of the way Peter reacted at the sound of Harry's name.

She keeps her eyes steady on him, refusing to back down at the feral look in his. "You haven't spoken to me all week," she reminds him.

He starts to shake his head but she cuts him off and says, "No, Peter, you've been avoiding me since Monday, and whatever's going on, you have to – "

"You were out _all night_—"

"—tell me," she bursts, "_tell_ me what's going on."

Peter's chin juts out, his face a pale mask of misery. He is starting to withdraw. But she has him here, riled and angry, and she knows if she just pushes him enough that he might yield.

"With you and Harry," she says. "Tell me what's going on."

For a long time he is quiet. MJ is almost frightened by his silence, by the stone, unchanging expression on his face.

"What on earth," he says chillingly, "would make you ask me about Harry?"

She has never been scared of Peter before, but in this instant she might be. The way he asks it rattles something in her core. The weight of everything is sinking back on her shoulders again, piece by debilitating piece.

"Because of Monday. Because of what happened when I said his name," she says. He doesn't react, so she presses a little further, cautiously, determinedly. "Because of the way you're talking about him right now."

"Have you seen him?"

It almost comes tumbling out of her. There is a guilty knot of words at the base of her throat, and she's afraid they're going to fall out of her like marbles and scatter on the floor.

"MJ." Peter grabs her by the shoulders.

There is nothing even remotely rough about it, but she will not tolerate it. She wrenches herself out of his grasp with practiced precision.

"Don't touch me," she seethes.

His hands hover where she used to stand, shaking, disconnected from his body. "Have you _seen_ him?" Peter asks again.

She is so spiteful and curious that she almost says yes. She almost does, so she can hurt him back, so she can make him feel as powerless and small as he was about to make her feel. So then she will force his hand into explaining just what the _hell_ it is that went on between him and Harry.

"No," she says.

She turns her back on him, wrenching her door open and slamming it before she can see if he is trying to follow. She stands there with her back pressed against the wood, her whole body quaking, her knees weakening, sliding down the doorway into a heap.

Peter has wrecked _everything_.

Why can't she have this? Why can't she have this one simple, guiltless, beautiful thing? Why is every small shred of anything _good _only temporary?

Her breaths come in uneven and shallow as the world comes crashing around her again. She has no job. She has no source of income. This semester, if she even makes it to the end, will undoubtedly be her last.

She was starting fresh. She was going to be the new MJ, somebody smart, somebody with a _plan_, somebody confident and graceful and prepared, and here she is sitting on the cold floor with her head between her hands crying all over again.

"Fuck," she mutters to herself, the word warbled and watery. She squeezes her eyes shut and feels the stream of thick tears slide down her cheeks. "_Fuck_."

She clutches at her shoulders, feeling the heat of Peter's fingers on her skin, shuddering at the memory of it. He didn't know. He doesn't know. The shit with her father began long after she and Peter disappeared from each other's lives. The yelling, the fighting, the bruising, the hate –

There's a knock on the door.

"MJ."

She holds her breath, sits perfectly still, listening to hear heart whir and hammer sloppily in her chest.

"MJ, let me in."

She closes her eyes, leans her head against the door.

"Please?"

She is still in her robe, cinched at the waist, when she finally takes a breath and wraps her hand around the doorknob. She uses it to ease herself up and then swipes the tears out of her eyes and sets her mouth straight.

When she opens the door he is standing there, slouching apologetically. She can tell he has calmed considerably, that he is about to tell her he is sorry, that he might even explain himself, but it all spills out of her before he can try.

"I'm a burlesque dancer," she says. His eyes lift in surprise, his posture momentarily frozen. "Or, at least I was. I got fired last night. That's where I've been, by the way, not out partying like you think I've been, thanks for that." She pushes out her chin, puts her hands on her hips and squares herself. "I _dance_ because I'm good at it and I like it and I need it to pay for school."

"MJ …"

"No, no, I'm not through." She takes a step closer to him, feeling a sudden surge of strength, swelling inside of her, reckless and piqued. "I know what you think of me, Peter. What you've thought of me. And you're right." She claps a hand to her chest. "I slept around in high school. I drank. I partied. I got arrested hanging out on the docks, I got my belly button pierced in some guy's basement, and I have woken up _more than once_ with no idea of where I was or how I got there."

Peter's mouth is unhinged. The bridge between them has been broken for so long now – she knows she has to finish burning it before they can ever put it back together again. Every word that comes out of her, every confession she makes, is one small, selfish relief, one less thing she has to hold to her chest.

"And you?" she says, her voice too loud in her ears. "You're gonna have to learn to be okay with that. Because that's who I was. It's not who I am anymore, but it's who I was, not that it matters, because I'm still a good person. I'm still MJ. I'm _still _the MJ who shared hot dogs and chased fireflies and stole your comic books, and I'm _still_ the MJ who cares about you, so stop this. Stop the judgment, stop the pulling away, just – stop making me jump through hoops. I'm here. _Talk _to me, Peter."

She is breathless, red-faced, and finally empty when she gets it all out of her, like she is sucking poison out of her blood. It is the first relief she has felt in months, and it is followed too quickly by the horror of what she has done: either this will be the first step in fixing things with Peter, or she has severed any chance of friendship with him at all.

It takes him too long to speak. The quiet is excruciating. She almost bows her head down and mumbles some excuse, almost shuffles behind the doorframe and closes it and spares him from the awkward follow-up to her rant, but she is paralyzed.

"Okay," he finally says.

She waits for him to say more, and when he doesn't, she laughs. She can't help it. "That's it?"

He nods. "And I'm sorry," he says. "If you ever felt … MJ. I've never thought badly of you. I've worried," he says. His eyes are kinder now. Gentler. "There's a difference."

She feels bad now, for ever having doubted him.

"Thank you for telling me the truth," he says.

She tucks her chin into her chest, feeling the residual embarrassment coming on. Over the next few days she will no doubt play this little speech like a broken record over and over, regretting it and un-regretting it until she exhausts herself.

But she isn't through here. Not yet.

"Are you going to tell me the truth?" she asks, quietly, patiently.

Peter tucks a strand of wet hair behind her ear. The gesture is surprisingly forward and intentional that she doesn't even react. She already knows that his answer is going to be no.

"I trust you," he starts.

"So tell me."

The words are painful and thick on his tongue. "I _can't_," he says.

She looks up at him and she believes him. She doesn't want to. She is thinking of last night, of the pressure of Harry's lips on hers, of the warmth of his bare skin, of their limbs tangled in his sheets, and she _doesn't want _to believe Peter.

"Okay," she says.

It feels like somewhere there is a door slamming. It is suddenly hard to look at him, because she is afraid that if she looks too long he will know.

"And I know this sounds crazy. I know that. But MJ, if he … he might try to get in touch with you. And if he does – just – tell me, okay? Please just tell me. Before you do anything."

MJ should tell him right now. This is her opening. After this if she is discovered, she won't have any excuses, won't have a chance for redemption.

She shouldn't have to decide between them. As a kid she couldn't have imagined a scenario where she would.

"Alright," she says to her bare feet.

After Peter leaves she sits on her bed and presses her fingers to her swollen lips, grazes her fingers along her bare thighs, feeling the ghosts of last night's aches on her skin.

If neither of them will tell her the truth, she will find out for herself.

((()))

She spends Thanksgiving, and the last few dollars in her bank account, in a youth hostel.

The shitty thing about Empire State dorms is that they close over the holidays. She has nowhere to go. Peter asks her about it, or at least tries to feel her out, and she lies about taking a bus up north to her aunt's house. Harry calls. She ignores him, the same way she has for these past few weeks.

She took her old job again. Her old job with her terrible boss who stands too close and makes lewd comments and doesn't give a crap about his staff. It is barely, _barely_ enough to cover the cost of the dorms. She eats anything she can get cheaply, and unfortunately it is mostly ramen. Everything else is coming out in loans.

There's a television in the common room of the youth hostel, and MJ spends Thanksgiving Day sitting on the couch, watching football with a bunch of European kids who are traveling and have no concept for Thanksgiving in the first place.

That night she falls asleep on her empty stomach and tries to scrounge up something to be thankful for. She's alive. Her father is out of her life. She is still in school.

Peter is speaking to her again. He talks to her about his aunt, about his classes, about his photography. She had no idea how good he was at it.

The morning after Thanksgiving she wakes up in a room with seven other teens and twentysomethings to the sound of someone screaming in Italian. One of the tourists. MJ almost falls off the bunk of her bed as everyone starts clambering up at once – she grabs her bag, fully packed at the foot of her bed, already ready to run.

She can't understand a thing the kid is saying. Only one word connects in her consciousness, enough to fully rouse her from her sleep: _Spider-Man._

And that's when she hears the crash.

_"Shit_."

It can only be an earthquake. Or an apocalypse. She tumbles off the top bunk and hits the floor, and then feels her bag thud on top of her. The impact knocks the wind out of her – someone steps on her on their way out the door and she hardly even notices, trying to regain her breath.

Eventually she clambers back up to her feet. She can't stay in the building. All the furniture is flimsy and falling with every shake of the ground. Unsteadily she reaches the stairwell and barely manages to scale the three floors to the bottom unscathed.

When she hits the street she thinks it might have been better to stay inside. It is a full on war zone. The entire block is ripped apart, cars are flipped over and burning, gunshots are spraying the cement and on either side of the sidewalk are people standing, staring, watching – _what?_

Her eyes follow their eyes and she sees it: a man in a gigantic metal suit, his footfalls so heavy that she can feel the impact of them crunching the street.

People are running, screaming, watching, which makes them stupid. They are smacking into each other as they go. MJ is only out for a few seconds when the first person barrels into her. She throws out her hands and barely stops herself from eating cement when she hits the ground.

Her knees and palms stinging and bleeding, she scrambles back up and casts her eyes back at the horrible, menacing creature. There is a man inside of it. She only knows because it is yelling something, accented and garbled but nonetheless clear: he is the cause of all of this havoc, and he doesn't care who gets in his way.

MJ has always had a knack for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

She runs. She is not going to be one of the stupid people who gapes at the goings-on and then gets hit by debris and bites the dust, and she is not going to be one of those even stupider people who sticks around warning the stupid people to run too. They know what they're in for and if they're going to wait like sitting ducks for their imminent deaths then there is nothing she can do to stop them.

_Spider-Man_, they all keep saying. As she runs she hears his name, whispered, shouted, moaned, like a call, like a prayer.

He won't come. He hasn't been around in months. Months that the Black Cat has been robbing banks and beating the shit out of random criminals and breaking into museums. Months that petty crime has started to run rampant again around the streets of their city. Spider-Man has been gone since the day Gwen died – and she sincerely doubts he will change his mind today.

In fact, not for the first time, she wonders if Spider-Man is even alive anymore. Nobody had any definitive proof. They was a handful of witnesses claiming that they saw him leave the scene at the plant after he called in Gwen's death to the police, but other than that …

She is remembering now, for the first time in weeks, Harry's promise to stop Spider-Man. It hasn't occurred to her. And why would it? It's not as if Spider-Man has been around for her to worry about.

And it certainly doesn't look like he will be now.

MJ finds pretty quickly that running is futile. The man in the suit is making his rounds up and down the block with astonishing speed – as soon as she finds a cross street she ducks through it, deeper into Midtown, but she hears the telltale crunch of cement behind her and she _knows_ – it's coming. She can't outrun it.

And the trouble is, this street isn't nearly as crowded as the last one. She just made herself more of a target than she ever would have been back on the main street with all of the idiots standing and watching and waiting to die.

One quick sweep of her eyes is all it takes to confirm her fears: there are maybe twenty people on this lonely block, all of them running, all of them clearly visible. Her odds aren't good, and she hates herself for thinking like that. For thinking that she might be relieved if whoever the hell this is went after somebody else and spared her.

"_Watch out!_"

It's a teenage boy up ahead of her, his gaze locked on something behind her – above her – with palpable horror in his eyes.

She wheels around just in time to see the taxi flip up out of the street and barrel toward her.

She is going to die. MJ watches it move in slow motion and knows there is nothing she can do to avoid it. It's strange, but nothing profound happens to her: her life doesn't flash before her eyes, she doesn't feel the weight of her regrets or the yearning for what she has yet to do. It isn't acceptance, it's just that she cannot process it. She cannot fathom it.

In the split second before the car crashes into her, she wonders how Gwen felt. If it was all this sudden. If she had any time to see it coming, if she thought there was even a shred of a chance she might be saved.

And then something unexplainable happens. Something unexplainable and downright idiotic. Without even consciously deciding to, she throws her arms out in front of her, using the full weight of her body to propel herself forward, to lock her elbows in.

The car smacks into her outstretched arms and she stumbles backward but stays standing upright … with the taxi clutched in her hands.

She drops it as soon as it happens and it lands with a clamor at her feet.

"No fucking way," she says, reeling backward, suddenly unsteady and dizzy with disbelief. It is black at the edges of her vision. She feels herself falling into darkness before she actually starts to physically fall, and when she does, she hears a voice, young and unmistakable, at the far reaches of her memory –

_We have to fix her, Dad. Please. Do something. Anything_.

It doesn't hurt when she hits the pavement. She is so far gone that she doesn't feel anything at all.

(((())))

I got ANOTHER internship. This time for social media in Seattle in like a month. It turns out that instead of being a general disappointment to society, I'm going to be a general disappointment to society who lives off very short paid internships in random cities for the rest of her life!

Things that I have done this week to toe the edge of childhood and adulthood: This week I wrote fanfiction ... in an airport bar. In plain view. I also tried my very first mimosa, and thus got daytime tipsy for the very first time, and then proceeded to go watch How to Train Your Dragon 2 with a theater full of seven year olds (which I sincerely, highly, aggressively recommend. not the part where I was tipsy, but the part where I saw a really great movie full of feels that I've been WAITING FOREVER TO SEE).

What I'm basically trying to say is I have the heart of a child and the liver of a 22-year-old.


	11. Chapter 11

Birds of a Feather

The moment she starts to wake up she wishes that she wouldn't. It's _loud_.

For a few splitting moments it is louder and more overwhelming than she could have ever imagined sounds could be. Before her eyes are even open, before she regains any semblance of control over her limbs or any feeling aside from the dull, mounting ache in her head, she hears – _everything_.

Sirens. People screaming. Babies crying. The skid of car tires against the cement, the crackle of a loudspeaker, the pop of a bullet leaving a gun – the sound of footsteps, sneakers and heels and loafers, almost as if she can pick them out individually – and then, as she slowly fights her way back into reality, she hears frightened whispers nearly word-for-word, hears the sounds of people breathing, hears the hum of an air conditioning unit that must be at least a block away.

She is dreaming. She must be dreaming. Finally, mercifully, a voice cuts through the noise:

"Mary?"

As soon as her eyes flutter open the pain in her head is searing enough that she bites the inside of her cheek, bites it so hard that it bleeds. Her hand flies up to the tender part of her head, where she feels it the most.

"Hey, hey. Relax. You're fine."

A face swims over her – the teenage boy from before, the one who warned her that the car was coming at her. She remembers it all with perfect clarity, as if it only just happened. She wonders how long she has been out.

"I'm – shit," says MJ, trying to ease herself up onto her shoulders. Her stomach roils in protest, and the boy puts a hand on one of her shoulders, easing her back down.

"Here," he says, and there is something soft under her head, something that isn't cement.

"You should run," she tells him murkily, still unsure of whether or not this is real.

He shakes his head. "We're fine. We're safe. Spider-Man stopped him."

"Spider-Man?"

Now she knows she must be dreaming.

"Yeah. Blasted right past us down the block."

In her periphery she can see the yellow taxi cab sitting on the ground, dented from where the man in the enormous mechanized suit first smashed into it. She blows out a breath. This is already so embarrassing, to have this stranger crouching over her, to not be able to get up. And now she is having this very strange recollection …

"It's funny," she says, "I don't know what hit me, but I remember – " She laughs. She's going to sound nuts. Like she has brain damage. Maybe she does. "Right before I hit the ground …"

"Catching a flying taxi with your bare hands and dropping it on the ground?"

She blinks up at him. He's kidding. He is terrifyingly spot on, but he is kidding.

She laughs again. It hurts the back of her neck, her shoulders, which are inexplicably sore. "I couldn't have …"

"You did," the boy insists. He looks up the block and the way he scans with his eyes and the general quiet around them, she can tell that they are mostly alone. "Don't worry, I think I'm the only one who noticed."

She holds her hands up and looks at them. They are bright red, but if she looks closely, to her complete astonishment, there appear to be little yellow flakes of paint in her nails and between the crevices between her fingers.

"It's Mary, right?" the boy asks.

She is still staring at her hands. "Mary Jane," she says softly, only half paying attention to him. She puts her hands back down at her sides. It is all coming back to her, one flash at a time: running down the street, seeing the car, knowing that she would _die_ – _she should be dead_ – and the unfamiliar, breathtaking impact of the car against her wrists, the strength, the control.

"Right. Mary Jane," says the boy. He is frowning at her head, where she must have hit the ground.

For the first time since she opened her eyes she takes a long and scrutinizing look at him. "How did you know that?" she asks. She knows for a fact she ran out of that hostel without her wallet or her phone.

The boy tilts his head down, and there is something tragic even in that small movement, that an unconscious part of MJ realizes who he is before he says it.

"You probably don't remember me – it's been a few years. I'm Bradley," he says. "Gwen's brother."

(((())))

It takes a few minutes for her to feel steady enough to get up from the sidewalk. Bradley suggests a hospital, but one look out at the main street and MJ vetoes the idea immediately. If she is walking around and functional enough then there is no point in battling through the hysteria of the crowds, or waiting in an emergency room full of people who are much more badly hurt. And besides, right now the state of her bleeding head is the least of her worries.

"My apartment's not far – you probably remember," says Bradley, leading her there.

No wonder she didn't recognize him. It's been maybe two years since the last time MJ went to Gwen's place for tutoring, and Bradley was practically a baby then, barely fifteen with the full cheeks and the messy hair of a boy in the throes of all the terrible things puberty has to offer.

Now he is at least a foot taller than she is, his hair much shorter, his cheekbones squarer and his bones all skinny and unsettled, like he has grown too fast and is waiting for the rest of his body to catch up.

"You're a senior now?" she asks. It is almost laughable, how casual the question is when half the city is blown up and she just lifted a fucking vehicle and she is just seeing him for the first time since his _sister_ died, but she can't think of anything else to say.

"Yeah," he says. "Almost halfway through."

He is so careful and kind with her, making sure he walks slow so she can keep up, checking on the back of her head every block or so. It makes her heart hurt, to watch him. She knows his life has been anything but easy.

"College plans?" she asks.

He grins. He has the kind of smile that looks out of practice, but genuine nonetheless. "Early admit into Stanford."

"Shit," says MJ. "I mean – congratulations. That's amazing."

"Not quite as amazing as catching a speeding car in mid-air, but I'll take it."

They are quiet for a moment. The adrenaline is starting to cool off under her skin and she is finally starting to think clearly, and grimly, of the implications of what she just did.

"About that …" she starts.

Bradley shakes his head, just once, and his voice is firm. "Trust me," he tells her, with an edge in his voice she can't quite interpret. "I'm really fucking good at keeping secrets."

(((())))

Gwen's mother is a wreck. When Bradley opens the door to the apartment she throws herself at him and practically crushes him, trying to contain all six-foot-something of him in her short little arms.

"Thank god, thank god," she mutters. Her eyes are crushed shut so she see MJ trailing behind him, but MJ sees the tracks of tears that are trailing down her exhausted face. Behind her are the two other boys, Gwen's youngest brothers whose names she can't remember, the two of them standing stricken by the couch and looking pale with relief.

When she finally releases Bradley she says, "We're moving. We are getting out of this godforsaken city. We're _moving_."

MJ shuffles uncertainly in the doorway. Even from here the place smells so painfully familiar, like vanilla and cinnamon and _Gwen_. Walking into this apartment feels like walking into a crypt, like it is somehow haunted, like she shouldn't be here.

"Mary Jane," says Gwen's mother warmly, trying and failing not to look as terrified as she is.

"Hi," says MJ weakly. She walks out from behind Bradley and shifts her weight between her feet. It occurs to her that the next social construction of this scene would be to step forward, to hug Gwen's mother, this woman who once a week would welcome MJ into her home and sometimes even bake cookies and make them tea, who asked her about boys and college plans, who treated her like a human and not a lost cause like most of the other adults in her life.

The moment passes, though, and the two of them are still just standing there, staring at each other as if they have both been ripped out of a different lifetime.

"She got knocked down pretty badly during the attack," Bradley explains, gesturing to MJ's head. "I thought I'd bring her back here."

"Go get the First Aid kit," Gwen's mother instructs one of the younger boys, who heads off obediently. She steps forward and cringes at the back of MJ's head – she is pretty sure it has stopped bleeding but it's still a sticky, tangled, throbbing mess. "Oh, sweetheart."

MJ feels some flimsy muscle in her heart weaken at the endearment. She had forgotten about this. She had forgotten about coming to the Stacy's, where there was clean smelling laundry and a mother who loved you, where there was chaos and laughter and noise. She feels likes the bones in her body are finally at ease. There is an adult in charge here. For once, somebody else will account for her.

The moment she thinks it she feels more selfish than ever. How can she for a moment think of imposing on this woman who already has so much on her plate?

"It's fine, it doesn't even really hurt that much," says MJ, but Mrs. Stacy ignores her, narrowing her eyes at the wound, picking her fingers carefully through MJ's hair.

Mrs. Stacy looks over at Bradley. "How close were you?" she asks lowly, so the other brothers can't hear.

MJ wonders if Bradley will lie.

"Not that close," says Bradley.

She doesn't press the point, concerning herself with MJ's head. "You'll be alright," she says. "But – if I'm going to get to it, I'm going to have to cut your hair."

MJ lets her eyes slip closed for just a moment. She loves her hair. It is stupid and shallow and pointless of her, but she loves the way it gleams in the sun, the way it floods on her shoulders, the way it snaps behind her in a ponytail when she runs. Ever since she was a little girl she has been proud of it. She has never cut it really, only ever trimmed it, auburn and thick and lush, just like her mother's.

She remembers being a little girl, sitting patiently on the floor as her mother set it into a braid as long as a rope.

"Mrs. Stacy, I don't want to – I mean, I'm sure you guys have your own problems, I can just wait and get it patched up later – "

"Don't be ridiculous," says Mrs. Stacy firmly. A beat later Bradley is handing her a pair of scissors. "Here. Come sit in the kitchen. There's better light in there."

MJ follows her, passing a long hallway filled with family pictures. MJ's eyes only seem to take notice of the ones of Gwen. In one she is beaming and gap-toothed, the straps of one of her overalls drooping off her skinny shoulder. In another she is wide-cheeked and acne-prone, clutching shyly to a trophy at a science fair. In the worst one of all she is grinning beatifically up at a camera that Peter must be holding, the two of them clinging to each other. Her hand draped across his chest in this assured and steady away, as if nothing in the world could ever will them apart.

(((())))

When Mrs. Stacy finishes patching her up, MJ's hair is as short as a boy's. She touches the negative space where her hair used to be, feels the unfamiliar air against the exposed skin of her neck, and tries not to tear up when she catches her reflection in the kettle propped up on the stove.

"Very few people could pull off that cut as well as you," says Mrs. Stacy, who obviously can see past MJ's nonchalance on the matter.

MJ smiles at her, but she doesn't care so much about how it looks. She just cared that it was _there_.

"Thank you," she says, her fingers skimming the bandage. It occurs to her that she doesn't have anything resembling insurance. If she was going to bite it on the cement, it was lucky that she did it in front of someone whose mother had years of first aid training.

Mrs. Stacy sweeps up the last of MJ's hair, which has fanned catastrophically across the kitchen floor. "The dorms are so far from here," she says anxiously, looking out toward the window. Even twenty floors up MJ can hear sirens wailing. "You should stay in the guest room for the night."

MJ's eyes widen in surprise. She is so unused to this kind of kindness that it takes her a moment to collect herself. "Oh, Mrs. Stacy – thank you, but – "

"No buts." Her voice is firm and her eyes are tired. MJ has always had the sense that having so many boys, Mrs. Stacy is not a woman to be argued with.

"I left my stuff at the hostel," MJ murmurs, embarrassed.

"Hostel?"

MJ looks up at her, reluctant to explain, but something seems to dawn behind Mrs. Stacy's eyes before she has to. MJ feels her lips curl into her teeth. She never talked much about her home life with anybody, but she always got the impression that Gwen knew more than she ever said. It's clear now from the way that Mrs. Stacy is quietly considering the situation that she did.

Mrs. Stacy shakes her head and says, "We'll worry about that later."

MJ hears the word "we" and almost forgets about the attack, about her freakishly strong arms, even about her hair. Nobody has ever assumed responsibility for her so quickly, so unconditionally. Here she is, probably drudging up old and unexpected memories of this woman's lost daughter, in a moment when their family is more vulnerable than ever – she doesn't deserve this kind of kindness. Not from these people, who were given so few kindnesses of their own.

"You can sleep in the guest room. I'm sure I have clothes that will fit you." She reaches up and sweeps MJ's new hair to the side with a tenderness and grit that silences MJ's protests and roots her to the floor. "I would feel better if everyone just stayed under one roof."

(((())))

The guest room is right next to Gwen's old room. MJ never actually went this far into the apartment, but she knows which room is Gwen's because it's the only door that stays closed, and there's a whiteboard hanging with some innocuous, stupid note about groceries in Gwen's handwriting that nobody has erased.

The Stacy family is unduly kind to her. They eat Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner – turkey and sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce and pie – and Mrs. Stacy finds an old pair of pajamas for her to wear, then settles her into the guest room. She shows her where the landline is and MJ calls the hostel to tell them to lock up her stuff for tomorrow; she considers calling her father, or even calling Peter and Harry to let them know she is alright, but she could never call either of them knowing it is Gwen's home phone number that will pop up on their caller ID.

Once MJ is finally alone, though, the panic that she has kept at bay all evening starts to seep in slowly, sinking into her bones.

She lifted a car. A fucking _car_.

She kicks the sheets off of her body, suddenly too hot and too agitated to deal with them. She wants to tell somebody. She wants to yell it from the rooftops. This impossible, crazy, unbelievable thing just happened to her – and there is nobody to talk to about it.

Besides Bradley, that is. She thinks back to the walk to the apartment, and what he said about secrets. She wants to believe that he'll keep hers. She knows he meant well, but she doubts that any secrets Bradley has kept have quite the same depth as this.

Eventually she flicks the light on. She isn't going to sleep tonight.

It's a ridiculous thought that she has, and she shouldn't even be entertaining it, but she walks over to the ridiculously large wooden dresser in the corner of the room. She plants her hands on either side of it and shuts her eyes, jerking her arms upward and concentrating.

It doesn't budge. She drops her arms, feeling embarrassed even though there is nobody who could have seen, and that's when she hears a soft knock on her door.

She opens it to the tall shadow of Bradley, standing sheepishly in the doorway in flannel pajamas. There is a book in his hands.

"The light was on," he says, shrugging apologetically. His voice is barely over a whisper.

She edges out of his way. "You can come in."

He shuts the door behind him thoughtlessly, and then looks over at her, wincing a little, as if he should have asked first. She tilts her head in permission. The circumstances between them have clearly transcended the social norms of needing to leave a door open.

"I, uh – well, I thought if you were awake you might want to read a book," he says, handing it to her.

She takes it. "Huck Finn?"

She smirks up at him but when she sees the wariness in his lip, the question in his eyes, she understands that the book was just a reason knock on the door. They acknowledge it in the briefest of silences, and he relaxes a bit, as if he is shaking the falsity off of his shoulders.

"Can I ask you something?" he says, and now his voice is normal again, or something close to it.

MJ sets the book down on the bed. "Sure."

"I first off just want to say, that if – that no matter how you answer this question, I still promise I won't say anything. I _won't_."

His pupils are wide and dark in the dim light of the room, so similar to Gwen's that for a moment MJ feels as if she is looking at a ghost.

"I know," she says. It usually takes a lot more for her to trust somebody so unquestioningly, but she has a gut feeling about Bradley, about everyone in this family.

He offers her a small but nervous smile. "Good," he says. "And, uh – don't take this the wrong way. But." He clears his throat. "Are you the Black Cat?"

MJ's first reaction is to laugh, but she sees how serious he is, how expectant and watchful.

"Oh, Bradley," she says, almost sorry to disappoint him. "No. I'm not." She sits down on the mattress next to him and curls her legs up to her chest, resting her head on her knees. "Whatever happened out there today … it was the first time it ever happened. You know as much as I do."

Bradley stares down at his lap. "Then how did you know you could do it?" he asks, as if he is hopeful that this will somehow reveal something. "When did you start being able to – you know. Do that?"

"I didn't know. I just – it was instinct, I guess, I wasn't even thinking."

He is quiet for a moment, and then shudders. "Lucky for you. I thought you were gonna bite it."

"Not today," she says mildly.

She wonders how he can be so blunt about death after everything that has happened to him. She wonders how he is still optimistic, how he has planned this bright future on the west coast for himself, and how he can still be bullheaded enough to stop and wait for MJ to wake up on the street today when there was carnage and danger all around him.

Despite everything she wishes he weren't like this. This is the same fearlessness, the same selflessness, that got Gwen killed.

"What are you going to do now?" he asks.

She shrugs. "Nothing," she says. "I mean – it was a fluke."

"One hell of a fluke."

He gets up to leave the room then, leaving the book on the bedspread. MJ picks it up and leafs through the worn pages. She sees neat annotations in the margins. There isn't single spot in this apartment that isn't haunted by Gwen.

"I just want you to know," Bradley says, turning on his heels at the door. His cheeks are inflamed and he is so adamant that she is afraid he will wake up the rest of the boys. "If you ever need anything – if you ever want to talk about it – well, I already know. The damage has been done." His smile is lopsided and a little bit sad. "You can come to me. You can trust me."

MJ feels a sharp sting in the back of her nose as her eyes water up. She swallows thickly. "I know," she says again. "And thanks."

(((())))

Mrs. Stacy puts her in a taxi after breakfast the next morning, and tells her to spend Christmas break with them – doesn't ask, _tells_, and does not give MJ a single inch to refuse.

After she collects her things from the hostel she heads back to the dorms – they've opened early now, after the crisis displaced half the people in midtown and luckily left the dorms unscathed. She climbs up the stairs and inhales the familiar scent of it, and walks into the room that is half hers that still has the rest of her stuff in it, her books and her photographs and her worn out dance shoes lined up in the corner.

How soon does she have before the money runs out? She doesn't even want to think about it. She can't right now. She sets down her travel bag and sits on the mattress, careful when she rests her head against the wall not to disturb the bandage on her head, which, oddly, has not so much as ached since she woke up this morning.

She hooks her phone up to the charger. Nine missed calls. She is almost relieved as she is guilty to see them there; it is nice to know that anyone is still looking out for her.

Two of them are from Harry, two from Peter, another four from Peter's house (she can only assume is from May).

One of them is from her father.

She calls May first, who picks up on the first ring.

"Mary Jane – are you alright?" she asks, without a hello.

"I'm fine, are you? Is Peter with you?"

"We're fine, he's fine, he's back at the school. We were worried when we didn't hear from you – "

"My phone," says MJ, "it—well."

May interrupts her before she lies. "And here is Peter telling me the _dorms_ have been closed, and god only knows where you've been, I told that boy – "

"No, no, I – " She stops herself. "I'm so glad you're both alright."

"I want to talk to you but will you call Peter first, dear? He's been worrying about you since last night, and your roommate hadn't heard from you, and neither had the RA …"

MJ glances over and sees that Blake's shower caddy is gone, which can only mean that she is in the dorm.

"Mary Jane?"

"Yeah?"

"You're really alright?"

The lilt in May's voice is what finally tips her over the edge. She feels a tear slip down her cheek and swipes it away, but another one chases it, and another, thudding on the bedspread between her feet.

"Yeah," she says, keeping her voice even, and that's when the door opens.

She expects that it will be Blake, so she doesn't look up. She has seen Blake cry plenty of times by now so it's not that she is particularly embarrassed by the idea of Blake catching her in a moment of weakness, but she doesn't want to deal with it right now, doesn't want to deal with any of it, but then Blake just stands in the doorway and finally MJ looks up out of sheer confusion.

It isn't Blake.

"I, uh – I just found Peter," MJ stammers into the phone, blinking back the rest of her tears, not that it matters. He has already seen.

"Oh, good. I'll let you go, then. Good-bye, Mary Jane."

"G'bye," says MJ, hanging up the phone, staring down at it for an extra moment and praying to any god that will listen to regain her composure before she has to look up at Peter.

It doesn't work. Seeing him standing in the doorway, his eyes so warm and brown and stupidly familiar to her – like looking into a mirror – only makes it worse. She pushes the tears back with her open palm and laughs out loud, because she shouldn't be crying. There is nothing to cry over, really. At least not yet.

"Hey," says Peter. He takes a few cautious steps toward her.

The laughter bubbles up in her, becomes momentarily manic. She gathers it up and pushes it back inside of herself.

"Hey," she says back. She takes in a breath through her nose. It's weird – just seeing him, just knowing that he's in the room with her, makes her feel better, but for some reason she can't stop crying. "You're okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm … you're okay?" he asks, looking a little helpless, like he wants to help but doesn't know how.

"Yeah," she says, nodding too vigorously, trying too hard.

Peter shuts the door behind him, then crosses the room so quietly she almost can't hear his footsteps. She watches as eases himself onto the mattress, sitting beside her, meeting her gaze with the same steadiness that she used to rely on him for. She is reminded of a younger Peter, the intense way he would stare through the lenses of his glasses. He used to sit just like this. On the school bus, on the park bench, on the edge of his twin bed, those same patient, watchful eyes. Back when they could tell each other anything.

"What happened?" he asks, his voice low.

"I fell," she says, gesturing vaguely with her arms. "Then my hair …"

Peter's lip curves up on one side. "Yeah," he says wryly. "I noticed."

It takes so much to get a smile out of him at all that she can't help but smile back. "I hate it," she says candidly.

He reaches up and skims it with his fingers, in that tender, exposed spot on the back of her neck that feels naked now, without the mane of hair to cover it up. She shivers, but he still lingers for a moment before pulling his hand away.

"I don't," he says.

She eases her newly shorn head onto his shoulder, pressed against his collarbone, his chest. He shifts to accommodate her and she closes her eyes.

"We can talk about your blatant copying of my signature hairstyle later," says Peter, his voice a gentle rumble against her cheek.

She grins against his shirt. "Jackass."

"Copycat."

"You're just jealous. It looks better on me."

For a moment he doesn't say anything. She looks up at him. It's weird, seeing Peter from this angle, feeling the warmth of his neck against her forehead.

"You're right," he says, his eyelids lowering to look down at her. It makes him look sleepy. She lets her own eyes slide shut, burrowing her head further into his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It seems louder somehow. She feels like if she listened hard enough she could feel the blood rushing in his veins.

"I'm glad you're alright," she says.

He doesn't answer her, but he wraps one of his long arms around her shoulders and that's answer enough. He feels like an anchor. Like a kite handle. Like a buoy in a storm.

Like _home_.

(((())))

I turn 23 this week. I have been writing fanfiction for over a DECAAAAADE. If any of you young'uns were thinking to yourself "pfft it's fine I'll grow out of this and lead a fully functional adult life" WELL HERE IS A PSA: YOU WILL NOT.

(Here's another PSA: Life will be better because of it).


End file.
